Getty ImagesMeta boss Mark Zuckerberg has taken the witness stand in a landmark antitrust trial to defend his company against allegations that his company operates a social media monopoly.
His testimony is part of a case first brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2020 during the final days of the first Trump administration.
The US competition watchdog alleges Meta unfairly dominated the market through its acquisitions of photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012 and the messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.
The FTC is seeking to break up Meta by forcing a spinoff of Instagram or WhatsApp. Meta says there’s plenty of competition in social media, including from apps such as TikTok, X, and YouTube.
Wearing a dark suit and light blue tie, Mr Zuckerberg was the first witness in the case on Monday at a federal court in Washington DC. The trial is expected to last for two months.
The FTC pointed to a 2011 email Mr Zuckerberg sent saying: “Instagram seems like it’s growing quickly.”
The following year, he sent another email saying the company was “so far behind that we don’t even understand how far behind we are… I worry that it will take us too long to catch up”.
On the stand, Mr Zuckerberg defended his statements, calling the emails “relatively early” conversations about buying the app. He added that Meta had improved Instagram over the years.
ReutersMr Zuckerberg also said he wanted to buy Instagram because of its camera technology, not because of its social network. He is expected to continue his testimony on Tuesday.
The FTC says the company overpaid when it acquired Instagram for $1bn and WhatsApp for $19bn as a defensive move.
“They decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them,” said FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson in his opening statement at Monday’s trial.
Meta countered that the lawsuit from the FTC, which originally reviewed and approved both those acquisitions, was “misguided”.
Meta “acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to improve and grow them alongside Facebook”, the company’s attorney Mark Hansen argued.
The FTC lawyer cited a 2012 memo from Mr Zuckerberg in which he discusses the importance of “neutralising” Instagram.
Mr Matheson called that message “a smoking gun”.
Meta, on the other hand, said the purchases made the consumer experience better.
“Acquisitions to improve and grow” have never been found unlawful, Meta’s lead litigator, said on Monday, “and they should not be found unlawful here”.
Meta said last year that it had 3.27 billion daily active users across its products.
Instagram was expected to account for more than half of Meta’s advertising revenue in the US in 2025. according to research firm Emarketer.
Meta has been making regular overtures to Trump since his election.
The company contributed $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund, and has added former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) boss Dana White, a Trump ally, to Meta’s board of directors this year.
The company also announced in January that it was rolling back content moderation policies that Republicans said had amounted to censorship.
It also agreed to pay Trump $25m to settle a lawsuit over the suspension of his accounts after the US Capitol riot in 2021.
Mr Zuckerberg has also visited the White House in recent weeks.
The Meta boss has lobbied Trump in person to have the FTC drop the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.
When asked by the BBC to confirm that report, Meta sidestepped the question but said in a statement: “The FTC’s lawsuits against Meta defies reality.”
FTC v Meta begins as another major antitrust case – USA v Google – grinds on.
The Department of Justice won the first phase of that case last summer when Judge Amit Mehta found that Google holds a monopoly in online search, with a market share of around 90%.
Last month, government attorneys reiterated a demand made during the Biden administration that a court break up Google’s search monopoly.
The FTC’s case against Meta will be tougher to prove, says Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia.
“I think they have a real uphill battle,” Ms Phillips-Sawyer said of the FTC.
“They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”
That’s because compared to online search, there’s more competition in the personal network services space that Meta operates in, Ms Phillips-Sawyer said.
Amazon and Apple also face antitrust lawsuits by US enforcers.
