The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) grilled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday over dozens of emails and messages it exchanged with other executives for the acquisition of Social Media Giant’s Instagram and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg went to the stands on the second day in a trial where the FTC was trying to show meta, which he bought Instagram and WhatsApp to eliminate allegedly dominated competitors in the social networking space.
Daniel Matheson, the FTC’s lead lawyer, emailed the Meta CEO, pushing him to explain the company’s motivation behind his Instagram purchase in 2012 and WhatsApp purchases in 2014.
In the 2012 exchange, Meta’s former chief financial officer David Eberman asked Zuckerberg what he wanted to achieve with the Instagram acquisition and offered several options, including “neutralizing potential competitors.”
Zuckerberg responded at the time and confirmed that it was one of the factors.
When Matheson asked Meta CEO on Tuesday if “the authentic reason for buying Instagram was disruptive,” Instagram said, “I thought it was better, so I thought it would be better to buy it.”
Meta CEOs primarily frame the company’s decision to buy Instagram as a strategic choice between building their own app or buying an existing app.
In testimony over the past two days, the FTC shows that Meta struggles to adapt to the desktop-to-mobile transition in the early 2010s, when new apps like Instagram appeared on the ground.
As Instagram grew in popularity, Meta attempted to develop a mobile photography app called Facebook Camera.
But Zuckerberg voiced internally at the time the question, saying, “I’m worried that they don’t even understand how late we are, and that this will be a huge amount of work.”
After the acquisition, Zuckerberg expressed his dissatisfaction with Facebook’s progress in an interaction with Meta’s former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg is scheduled to testify later this week.
“Messenger hasn’t beaten WhatsApp. Instagram was growing much faster than us, so we had to buy it for $1 billion. … That’s not exactly killing it,” writes Zuckerberg.
In 2012 and 2013, Meta executives began to express concerns about the rise of mobile messaging apps, including WhatsApp. Zuckerberg described it as “the next biggest risk and consumer opportunity.”
“I’m really worried, so I’ve been thinking this hard on the past few sleepless nights… these guys are real deals,” said Javier Olivan, Meta’s chief operating officer for WhatsApp in 2013.
Meta purchased the messaging app for $19 billion next year.
Social media companies have rejected the FTC’s proposal that the company could develop independently, claiming it had improved on Instagram and WhatsApp after their respective acquisitions.
But more broadly, it argues that Meta is not a monopoly and points to many other competitors like Tiktok, YouTube, Imessage and X, which claims that the FTC is excluded from the individual social networking market.
Zuckerberg reportedly tried to avoid a prominent trial and his long appearance in recent weeks, and called on President Trump to reach a settlement.
