Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., for a second day on Tuesday, testifying about his intentions for acquiring Instagram in 2012.
In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook, which is now under the umbrella of parent company Meta, alleging it was in violation of antitrust laws by buying both Instagram and WhatsApp.
FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson pressed Zuckerberg on Tuesday over his internal message exchanges from 2012 with then-Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman regarding the $1 billion bid for Instagram.
“[What] I’ve been thinking about recently is how much we should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram and Path that are building networks that are competitive with our own,” Zuckerberg wrote to Ebersman, then agreeing with the chief financial officer when he said the purchase of Instagram would be a way to “neutralize a potential competitor.”
During this time, Facebook was working on creating its own picture-sharing app known as Snap, which was stumbling. Zuckerberg said the company was considering “buy vs. build” strategies, ultimately deciding it made more sense to buy Instagram.
“I thought that Instagram was better at that, so I thought it was better to buy them,” Zuckerberg told the court, referencing its abilities as a camera app.
Matheson, the FTC lawyer, told Zuckerberg that the Meta CEO’s communications leading up to the purchase suggested he was not focused on making improvements to Instagram. Instead, Matheson said, pointing to a Zuckerberg message, he wanted the app to gain control of “a rapidly growing, threatening new network.”
“I’m not sure [what] the full mess of what I wrote” was, Zuckerberg told the court. “We probably tried building dozens of apps over the history of the company and the majority of them don’t go anywhere.”
FTC BEGINS HISTORIC ANTITRUST TRIAL AGAINST META
Judge James Boasberg will be ruling on the lawsuit, which is the most recent effort to rein in technology companies. Boasberg has notably been the presiding judge over several lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s executive actions.
A ruling in favor of the FTC could force Meta to divest itself from WhatsApp and Instagram.