Zuckerberg revisits Instagram buy in FTC Meta monopoly case

Mark Zuckerberg in federal court Monday was forced to revisit a time when he doubted Facebook would be able to compete in mobile photo sharing, and decided to buy Instagram—testifying in a trial where the U.S. government is arguing it should unwind that acquisition. Zuckerberg, Meta Platforms Inc.’s CEO, kicked off a highly anticipated trial that’s been years in the making, where the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is setting out to prove he bought his way to a social networking monopoly. He answered the agency’s questions on the deal history for more than three hours Monday afternoon and is expected back for most of Tuesday. The FTC’s lead trial lawyer, Daniel Matheson, showed emails establishing that during the mobile app boom, between 2010 and 2012, Zuckerberg struggled to get his teams to build quality products for photo sharing. Matheson displayed emails from Zuckerberg expressing concern that it was far behind Instagram, including a June 2011 message stating they need to “get their act together quickly.” In September of that year Zuckerberg said, “If Instagram continues to kick a— on mobile or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what were doing now and if they have a growing number of people’s photos, then that’s a real issue for us.” Zuckerberg, wearing a navy suit and a powder blue tie, confirmed they were his emails. The messages bolster the FTC’s case that the purchase of Instagram—and later WhatsApp—were done to quash competition and generate a monopoly in sharing messages with family and friends online. Today, Instagram has more than 2 billion users and contributes significantly to Meta’s advertising revenue growth. Meta’s lawyer spent more than an hour Monday morning arguing that Meta is about more than friends and family, and competes with a wider range of social media companies that the company has said include YouTube, TikTok and Snap. Allowing people to connect with friends and family “remains one of our priorities,” Zuckerberg said. However, “we’ve always been a service that lets you discover and learn about what’s going on in the world.” The courtroom was full when he started his testimony. The trial started earlier on Monday with opening statements from both sides, with Chief Judge James Boasberg presiding. Agency attorneys kicked off their arguments by invoking a long US tradition of seeking to ensure a competitive marketplace, one that the FTC has accused Meta of violating. “For more than 100 years, American public policy has insisted firms must compete if they want to succeed,” Matheson said in his opening statement. “The reason we are here is that Meta broke the deal.” If the FTC prevails, a spinoff of Instagram and WhatsApp would undo years of integration between the apps, disrupt two of the most popular digital consumer products in the world and potentially erase hundreds of billions of dollars in Meta’s market value. It would also raise serious questions about how the government evaluates and approves deals. The trial is expected to last about two months and also feature testimony from former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg. ‘Killer acquisitions’ The FTC argues that Meta’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp are “killer acquisitions” that prevented those companies from competing. To support its case that Meta is a monopoly, the FTC will argue that the quality of its apps has declined, most noticeably with increased ads and weakened privacy protections. In 2010 “Meta was faced with a sea change in competitive conditions,” Matheson said, referring to the growing mobile market. “They decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them.” Meta bought WhatsApp in part to fend off an offer from Alphabet Inc.’s Google which was also considering buying the company, according to Matheson. And Meta also considered buying Snap Inc. for $6 billion in 2013, though the Snapchat owner turned the offer down. The number was not previously known, as reports at the time pegged the discussions as for half that much. A Snap representative declined to comment. In his opening argument, Matheson said the FTC will highlight “smoking gun” emails from Meta execs including Zuckerberg, particularly one from 2012 where he described the Instagram deal as a way to “neutralize a competitor.” After Meta bought Instagram it “fundamentally manipulated the experience” offered by the service, Matheson said, allowing it to avoid cannibalizing its own more profitable Facebook product. While that is a “rational business decision,” Matheson said it “offends the policy” of the antitrust laws. Also read: How Meta’s new AI ad model recommends creative for marketers Multiple competitors Meta has pushed back aggressively against the FTC’s claims, arguing that it competes intensely with a variety of platforms, including ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Snap’s Snapchat, Google’s YouTube, Apple Inc.’s iMessage and Elon Musk’s X. The FTC’s case is “at war with the facts and at war with the law,” said Meta lawyer Mark Hansen. The agency says that only Snapchat competes with Meta, and that a number of other past competitors, including MySpace, are now defunct. Hansen said that consumers’ use of the apps has changed dramatically over time, shifting to more passive engagement such as video, with Instagram’s Reels, YouTube’s Shorts and TikTok. While the FTC is focused on people’s use of the services to communicate with friends and family, Hansen said that has dropped precipitously, with less than 20% of Meta customers using the services for those functions in 2025. To make his point, Hansen pointed to the January 2025 TikTok “ban,” noting that both Facebook and Instagram saw spikes in usage while TikTok was down. Facebook saw 20% “more usage” during that time, while Instagram usage increased 17%, Hansen said. “The FTC’s entire case turns on convincing the court that Meta doesn’t compete with TikTok,” Hansen said. Recent news: TikTok gets more aggressive with advertisers amid ban uncertainty Meta notes that the FTC had a chance to challenge the deals—for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014—and permitted them to proceed. Meta had several key executives present in the courtroom Monday, including head of policy Joel Kaplan, general counsel Jennifer Newstead and Chief Marketing Officer Alex Schultz. The FTC opened an investigation into Meta in 2019 during the first Trump administration and sued the company in December 2020. Former FTC Chair Lina Khan under the Biden administration advanced the case, which is now in the hands of Chair Andrew Ferguson, who was named by President Donald Trump to head the agency in January. —Bloomberg News

Zuckerberg revisits Instagram buy in FTC Meta monopoly case

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