Meta anti-trust case: What Mark Zuckerberg told Court in 3 days — ‘didn't buy Instagram, WhatsApp because of threat…’

Meta anti-trust case: Meta Platforms Chief Mark Zuckerberg testified before the United States federal court for the third time on April 16, and argued against the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) allegation that his tech company Meta bought Instagram and WhatApp to reduce competition.

The billionaire was called during the trial as the first witness in the FTC's case against the tech giant. He took questions from attorney Mark Hansen, who sought to establish that Meta does not hold a monopoly in the social media space and faces “stiff global competition,” AP reported.

The FTC had used Mark Zuckerberg's emails to associates about Instagram's growth to illustrate that the Meta CEO was threatened by the company. Meta's attorney Hansen, in his questioning, tried to dismiss this claim as Mark Zuckerberg told him the conversations were curious in nature, as he is focused on inventing and understanding what other people create.

He responded “No” when asked by Hansen if his intent was to eliminate rivals with the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp, AFP reported.

Meta Anti-trust Trial: What Mark Zuckerberg Said…

• During the first day of trial, Hansen said Meta's competitors include TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, iMessage and X, Bloomberg reported. On concerns over competition from global rivals, Mark Zuckerberg expressed concern over China-based ByteDance's TikTok, and Google parent Alphabet's video-sharing platform YouTube.
• During the second day of trial, Mark Zuckerberg said: “Allowing people to connect with friends and family remains one of our priorities. We’ve always been a service that lets you discover and learn about what’s going on in the world.”
• On the third day of trial, over concern over Instagram's growth beating Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg told the court that “understanding what other people are creating is a big part of the process” and emails with “similar tones of concern” could be found about other companies too.
• “This is my job. I need to understand what is going on, and I need to push our teams to move quickly to learn about what is going on in a very competitive market,” he told the court.
• Mark Zuckerberg added that he had “no intention of acquiring Instagram only to slow its development and end a threat”, but instead focus on running it as an “independent brand”.
• On the acquisition of WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg denied the FTC's allegations that he was afraid of the company's potential. “It’s something I thought about, but later learned not to be worried because the owners didn't share the same vision or direction. I was interested in buying it for the usage of it. I thought the app was important and valuable,” Zuckerberg told the court.

Meta Anti-trust Allegations: What is the FTC's Case?

The FTC alleges that Facebook-parent Meta has monopolised technology that connects friends and family, in order to generate enormous profits, despite dropping consumer satisfaction, the AP report noted. The case was first filed in 2020 and the FTC is demanding that Meta be forced to break off WhatsApp and Instagram to level the playing field.

FTC's attorney Daniel Matheson also questioned Mark Zuckerberg about the wordings in his emails to associates indicating he was “more interested halting” the growth of Instagram, than improving the app.

The full trial, presided over by US District Judge James Boasberg is expected to last weeks and will see Facebook's former COO Sheryl Sandberg, former CTO Mike Schroepfer, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, and executives from rival social media companies also testify in court.

Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, when it was an ad-free photo-sharing website. In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $22 billion. Both acquisitions helped Facebook shift operations from a heavily desktop-based direction to a more mobile and app-based direction.

(With inputs from Agencies)