This week, we’re getting a peek behind the scenes at Meta and Facebook as the FTC’s antitrust trial against the company begins.
On Monday and Tuesday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand as the U.S. government makes its case that Zuckerberg and company run a social media monopoly. The FTC argues that “Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy — including its 2012 acquisition of up-and-coming rival Instagram, its 2014 acquisition of the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers — to eliminate threats to its monopoly.”
For its part, Meta argues that the social media space is still full of healthy competition and that the company grew Instagram and WhatsApp into what they are today.
The antitrust trial is years in the making, with the FTC originally opening the investigation in 2019 during the first Trump administration. Already, the trial has produced revelations about Meta’s history and view of the social media industry as a whole. Let’s take a look at the standout revelations from the Meta-FTC antitrust trial so far.
Mark Zuckerberg was really worried about Instagram as a competitor
Before acquiring Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg was really worried about Instagram. So much so that the Facebook founder called the prospect of falling behind Instagram “really scary,” according to internal messages from the time.
“Right now they seem to have two things that we don’t: a really good camera and a photo centric sharing network,” Zuckerberg wrote in an email prior to the acquisition.
Zuckerberg shared in messages that he was concerned by Instagram’s rapid growth and the fact that Facebook employees were using the app.
“One concerning trend is that a huge number of people are using Instagram every day…even FB employees — and they’re only uploading some of their photos to FB,” Zuckerberg said.
Messages like this show that Zuckerberg viewed Instagram as an existential threat to Facebook’s social media dominance. And he wasn’t only concerned about Instagram beating Facebook; he was also worried that a larger competitor would scoop up Instagram first.
“If Instagram continues to kick ass on mobile or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we’re doing now,” Zuckerberg said. “I view this as a big strategic risk for us if we don’t completely own the photos space.”
Facebook was building an Instagram competitor
Credit: picture alliance / Getty Images
“Theoretically we could go build this technology, but I’m worried we’re so far behind,” Zuckerberg wrote as he contemplated what an Instagram acquisition would cost the company.
In fact, Facebook was so concerned about Instagram that it started building a competing product. The company had interns working on building a competitor to the photo-sharing social network before ultimately deciding they were too far behind. According to internal company messages from 2011, Zuckerberg wasn’t happy with the progress being made on a Facebook Camera app.
“We might want to consider paying a lot of money for this,” Zuckerberg said, speaking of Instagram.
Zuckerberg considered abandoning Instagram after the acquisition
One really damning piece of the FTC’s case is a 2012 message from Zuckerberg from just months before Facebook acquired Instagram.
The Facebook founder considered buying Instagram and doing nothing with it. Under this strategy, the sole purpose of the acquisition would be to keep away the competition.
“By not killing their products we prevent everyone from hating us and we make sure we don’t immediately create a hole in the market for someone else to fill but all future development would go towards our core products,” Zuckerberg said in February 2012.
Mashable Light Speed
Zuckerberg defended himself against the FTC’s argument here by pointing out that the company didn’t end up utilizing this strategy.
Facebook was also concerned about failed platforms like Google+
One of the FTC’s other core arguments is that Facebook maintains a monopoly over platforms that “connect family and friends” specifically.
To bolster that case, the FTC raised Zuckerberg’s concerns over now-defunct social media platforms.
Path was a social media app that launched in 2010 with the purpose of only connecting with a user’s closest 50 family members and friends.
At the time, Zuckerberg was concerned about the app, and Facebook even considered acquiring it.
Zuckerberg was also worried about the launch of Google+ in 2011, admittedly because it was directly competing as a social network among family and friends.
Years later, in 2013, Zuckerberg would contemplate blocking ads on Facebook for mobile messenger apps like WeChat and Line as he worried about those companies becoming competitors.
Facebook offered $6 billion for Snapchat
Facebook tried to acquire Snapchat way back in 2013 for $3 billion. This was widely covered years ago when that news first leaked.
However, there was another, much higher offer that Snapchat turned down that was just revealed at the Meta antitrust trial.
According to Zuckerberg, after the initial $3 billion offer to acquire Snapchat was turned down in 2013, Facebook went back to the company later that year, offering double the amount. However, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel turned down the $6 billion offer as well.
Zuckerberg worried about Snapchat Stories
Snapchat changed the mobile social networking game when it released Stories shortly after turning down Facebook’s acquisition offer.
According to internal messages from 2014, Zuckerberg was concerned about the feature.
“Snapchat is now more of a competitor for Instagram and News Feed than it ever was for messaging,” he said. “We need to take this new dynamic seriously, both as a competitive risk and as a product opportunity to add functionality that many people clearly love and want to use daily.”
Instagram would go on to launch its own Stories feature in 2016.
Meta views TikTok, LinkedIn as competition
During the trial, Mark Zuckerberg has conceded that Meta views platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn as competition.
Meta even presented evidence showing that when TikTok went down during the brief period that it was banned in the U.S. earlier this year, Facebook and Instagram traffic surged by 20 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
Zuckerberg even shared that the company views the professional social network LinkedIn and the local social network Nextdoor as competitors. According to Zuckerberg, the reason for this is that Facebook is no longer a social media platform just for family and friends.
While this is interesting, it’s also a bit self-serving, too. As previously mentioned, the FTC’s argument is built around Meta monopolizing the “friends and family” networking space, which includes Snapchat and even smaller platforms like MeWe. (Zuckerberg admitted to never hearing of MeWe before. Mashable previously covered the platform in 2020 during a brief period when it gained popularity among conservative social media users.)
Platforms like TikTok, despite its broad popularity in the social media space, are not being considered as competition to Facebook in the FTC case. That likely explains why Zuckerberg is content with sharing this information in order to refute the government’s argument.
Zuckerberg wanted to reset everyone’s Facebook friends, create ad-only feed
Perhaps the weirdest revelation during the trial so far is in regards to some off-the-wall ideas Zuckerberg had for Facebook.
According to internal company emails, Zuckerberg came up with an idea in 2022 to reset every Facebook user’s friends to zero and then continue to wipe everyone’s social graph annually.
Zuckerberg also admitted that the company once considered creating a feed that only provided users with ads.
The Meta-FTC antitrust trial is ongoing, and there are sure to be more revelations as the case progresses. We’ll continue covering this story as it develops. You can also view the FTC’s exhibits from the case online via Dropbox.
