Zuckerberg defends Meta’s Instagram, WhatsApp deals in U.S. antitrust trial

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand on Monday at a high-stakes trial in Washington over U.S. antitrust enforcers’ claims that the company spent billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp to fend off Facebook competitors.

The FTC is seeking to force Meta to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, testing President Donald The President’s promises to take on Big Tech while posing an existential threat to a company that by some estimates earns about half of its U.S. advertising revenue from Instagram.

Wearing a dark suit and light blue tie, Zuckerberg calmly responded to questions while seeking to combat allegations Meta bought the companies a decade ago to eliminate competition among social media platforms where users connect with friends and family.

Zuckerberg emphasized that friends and family sharing was only one priority for the app along with discovering other content.

In fact, a 2018 decision to prioritize Facebook content shared by users’ friends over video posts and other public content failed to grasp a shift toward users sharing that content via messages instead of posting life updates in their feeds, Zuckerberg said.

“I think we misunderstood how social engagement online was evolving,” Zuckerberg said.

“People just kept on engaging with more and more stuff that wasn’t what their friends were doing,” he said.

He estimated that now around 20% of content on Facebook and 10% on Instagram is generated by users’ friends as opposed to accounts they follow based on interests.

Competition with TikTok

The FTC has pointed to emails in which Zuckerberg proposed acquiring photo-sharing app Instagram as a way to neutralize a potential Facebook competitor and expressed worry that encrypted messaging service WhatsApp could grow into a social network.

Meta has argued that its purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 have benefited users, and that Zuckerberg’s past statements are no longer relevant amid competition from ByteDance’s TikTok, Google’s YouTube, and Apple’s messaging app.

How users spend time on social media and which services they consider interchangeable will be core to the case. Meta will argue that an increase in traffic to Instagram and Facebook during TikTok’s brief shutdown in the United States in January shows direct competition.

The FTC claims that Meta holds a monopoly on platforms used to share content with friends and family, where its main competitors in the United States are Snap’s Snapchat and MeWe, a tiny privacy-focused social media app launched in 2016.

Platforms where users broadcast content to strangers based on shared interests, such as X, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit, are not interchangeable, the FTC has argued.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said in a ruling in November that the FTC “faces hard questions about whether its claims can hold up in the crucible of trial.”

The trial could stretch into July. If the FTC wins, it would have to separately prove that measures such as forcing Meta to sell Instagram or WhatsApp would restore competition.

Losing Instagram in particular could prove catastrophic to Meta’s bottom line.

While Meta does not release app-specific revenue figures, advertising research firm Emarketer forecast in December that Instagram would generate $37.13 billion this year, a little over half of Meta’s U.S. ad revenue.

Instagram also generates more revenue per user than any other social platform, including Facebook, according to Emarketer.

WhatsApp to date has contributed only a sliver to Meta’s total revenue, but it is the company’s biggest app in terms of daily users and is ramping up efforts to earn money off tools like chatbots. Zuckerberg has said that such “business messaging” services are likely to drive the company’s next wave of growth.

The President vs. Big Tech

The case is part of a crackdown on Big Tech started during The President’s first administration.

Meta has been making regular overtures to The President since his election, nixing content moderation policies Republicans said amounted to censorship and donating $1 million to The President’s inauguration. Zuckerberg has also visited the White House multiple times in recent weeks.

Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet’s Google also face antitrust lawsuits by U.S. enforcers.

Several major tech companies have moved to align with The President since the election, such as by rolling back diversity initiatives and having executives engage directly with the White House.

While a shift from the combative tone the companies took during The President’s first term, it has not resulted in a pullback on the antitrust cases.

—Jody Godoy and Katie Paul, Reuters

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