Years after the Federal Trade Commission sued Meta in a bid to halt acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, the trial that will shape its future is finally underway. The trial kicked off last month when CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand, and it’s expected to last several weeks.
Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram is a central part of the FTC’s case against Meta. The government says Zuckerberg bought Instagram to neutralize it as a competitor. When Instagram’s cofounder and former CEO Kevin Systrom took the stand, he didn’t exactly defend the move. While Zuckerberg had testified Meta had helped Instagram grow, Systrom testified Zuckerberg saw Instagram as a “threat” to Facebook’s growth and intentionally withheld company resources.
Further still, Facebook’s decision to pay $1 billion for Instagram — an app with no revenue and just a handful of employees — seemed like an incredible sum. Sheryl Sandberg thought Zuckerberg had overpaid for Instagram. In an exchange between the two from 2012, she said, “Yes, of course it’s way too much.”
There are more nuggets, too. Like how Meta sees TikTok as an earnest threat, how Europeans aren’t buying the ad-free subscriptions (duh), and why Zuckerberg thought about nuking users’ friend lists annually to boost engagement. Read Karissa Bell’s full breakdown of the FTC v. Meta antitrust trial so far.
— Mat Smith
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