Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg spent more than 10 hours on the witness stand in the social media empire’s landmark antitrust trial. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) called Zuckerberg as its first witness against this high-profile case against Meta in a Washington D.C. courtroom on Monday.
The FTC had argued that Meta used a “buy or bury” strategy to neutralize competitive threats and maintain monopoly power in the social media space. The trial began on April 14 in Washington, D.C., and is expected to last seven to eight weeks.
Zuckerberg at times faced intense questioning by the FTC’s lead attorney as he tried to defend his company’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. If the FTC wins the case, Meta could be forced to sell off the two platforms.
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It was revealed that antitrust concerns first surfaced years ago. According to an internal email revealed in the trial, Zuckerberg considered breaking Instagram out into its own company to avoid antitrust scrutiny back in 2018. “I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company,” Zuckerberg wrote in the email to company executives, and added “As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway.”
Zuckerberg also revealed what he referred to as a “crazy idea” he had in 2022, which involved purging all users’ friends to make them start out again as the cultural relevance of Facebook started declining. He also claimed Meta’s rivalry with TikTok had just begun. “TikTok is still bigger than either Facebook or Instagram,” he said. “I don’t like it when our competitors do better than us.”
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It was also revealed that Zuckerberg had concerns about the Facebook camera app, and that he tried to buy Snapchat for $6 billion, a bid that ultimately failed. While being questioned by an FTC attorney, Zuckerberg said he thought Snapchat “wasn’t growing at the potential that it could” and believed he could improve it. He also stated that Facebook wasn’t “for friends” as it used to be, rather it now functions as a “broad discovery and entertainment space.”