Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood in federal court on Monday defending the company against FTC’s allegations that it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp and created a social media monopoly.
Bloomberg Report Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced questions from the FTC regarding the company’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012, on the first day of a long and highly anticipated trial. The FTC claims that Meta, previously known as Facebook, became a monopoly on social networks by getting Instagram and then Whatsapp.
During his testimony that lasted more than three hours, Zuckerberg was forced to revisit an era where he doubted Facebook’s ability to compete in the mobile photo-sharing market. Daniel Matheson, the lead trial lawyer for the FTC, presented emails from 2010 to 2012, showing Zuckerberg’s concerns, as Facebook lags behind the mobile app boom Instagram. In one email starting in June 2011, Zuckerberg said Facebook needs to “act quickly” to keep up with Instagram.
The FTC claims that Meta’s Instagram and WhatsApp purchases are “killer acquisitions” designed to eliminate competition and maintain monopoly in the social media market. After getting Instagram, Matheson claimed that Meta “fundamentally manipulated the experience” provided by the service to avoid cannibalism in its own more profitable Facebook product.
The FTC believes Zuckerberg is specifically looking to adopt rival social media sites that focus on connections with friends and family. Zuckerberg testified that friends and family are key elements of Facebook, but that’s not the only focus. He said, “We’ve always been a service where we can discover and learn about what’s going on in the world.”
Meta opposes the FTC’s claims, claiming that lawyer Mark Hansen faces fierce competition from a variety of platforms, including Tiktok, Snapchat, YouTube, Imessage and X (formerly Twitter). Hansen pointed out that consumer use of social media apps has changed significantly over time, with fewer than 20% of meta customers using the service to communicate with friends and family in 2025.
In their opening discussion, Meta’s lawyers I said It said, “This case is a grab bag of FTC theory in the war with facts and law.” They said, “The entire FTC case consists of convincing the court that Instagram is not competing with Tiktok. That makes no sense.”
If FTC is preferred in the case, it could lead to spinoffs of Instagram and WhatsApp, revoking years of integration between apps and erasing hundreds of millions of dollars in meta’s market value. The trial is expected to last around two months, featuring testimony from former meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, in addition to Zuckerberg.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News, which covers the issues of freedom of speech and online censorship.
