8 Things We Learned From Mark Zuckerberg’s Antitrust Trial Testimony

Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg spent more than 10 hours on the witness stand in the social media empire’s landmark antitrust trial.

The trial opened on Monday in a Washington, DC, federal courtroom and the Federal Trade Commission called Zuckerberg as its first witness in its high-profile case against Meta.

The FTC alleges Meta “helped cement” its illegal monopoly in the social media market with its acquisition of Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp more than a decade ago.

Zuckerberg, at times, faced intense grilling by the FTC’s lead attorney as he tried to defend his company’s purchases of the two platforms.

If the FTC wins the case, Meta could be forced to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.

Here are eight revelations that emerged from the tech mogul’s court testimony over three days:

Antitrust worries surfaced years ago

Two years before the FTC initially sued Meta over allegations that it violated US competition laws, Zuckerberg considered breaking Instagram out into its own company to avoid potential antitrust scrutiny, according to a 2018 internal email revealed by the government at trial.

“I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company,” Zuckerberg wrote in the email to company executives.

Zuckerberg added, “As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway.”

If a break up were to happen, Zuckerberg wrote, history showed that companies could end up better off.

Asked about this view at trial, Zuckerberg said, “I’m not sure exactly what I had in mind then.”

A ‘crazy idea’ to boost Facebook’s relevance

Zuckerberg’s “crazy idea” for Facebook in 2022 involved purging all users’ friends.

The CEO — fearful that Facebook was losing cultural relevance — made the proposal in a 2022 email to the social network’s top brass, according to internal messages presented by the FTC.

“Option 1. Double down on Friending,” Zuckerberg wrote in the message. “One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again.”

Tom Alison, the head of Facebook, responded with some hesitancy.

“I’m not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG,” Alison wrote back, referring to Instagram.

Sheryl Sandberg wanted to play Settlers of Catan

Zuckerberg once offered to give Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta, a tutorial in the board game Settlers of Catan.

The lesson offer came up in 2012 messages in which the two discussed the fresh $1 billion purchase of Instagram, partially redacted missives presented by the FTC during Zuckerberg’s testimony showed.

“We would love it. I want to learn Settlers of Catan too so we can play,” Sandberg told Zuckerberg in the message. He responded: “I can definitely teach you Settlers of Catan. It’s very easy to learn.”

Zuckerberg told Sandberg in the notes that Facebook Messenger wasn’t “beating” WhatsApp, which Meta, then called Facebook, would buy two years later. “Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion,” he said in the message.

“That’s not exactly killing it,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Sandberg was called as the government’s second witness on Wednesday.

Meta’s rivalry with TikTok has only just begun

During his testimony, Zuckerberg hammered home Meta’s argument that the tech giant faces massive competition from other apps, especially TikTok.

“TikTok is still bigger than either Facebook or Instagram,” Zuckerberg testified. “I don’t like it when our competitors do better than us.”

He said he’s determined to grow Meta.

“You can sort of bet that I’m not going to rest until we are doing quite a bit better than we are doing now,” said Zuckerberg.

Facebook Camera app struggles were a source of worry

Instagram’s early rise shook Zuckerberg. As his company struggled to mount its response with the Facebook Camera app, the CEO began to lose his patience.

“What is going on with our photos team?” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2011 message to top executives, as revealed by the FTC in court.

Zuckerberg then described a number of individuals, whose names were redacted, as being “checked out.” He added another person didn’t want “to work with this team because he thinks this team sucks.”

Later, Zuckerberg downplayed his concern about Instagram. He said the photo-sharing app was “adjacent” to what Facebook was trying to do.

As for Facebook Camera, Zuckerberg sent an email to Sandberg, the then-Facebook COO, weeks after the company acquired Instagram in 2012 listing a handful of efforts that could be “scaled back or canceled”

“Mobile photos app since we’re acquiring Instagram,” was one of the items on the list.

Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat for $6 billion

Zuckerberg’s failed bid to buy Snapchat was highlighted by the government as the Meta chief executive was on the stand.

Meta, then called Facebook, offered to buy Snapchat for $6 billion in 2013 just two years after its launch, according to an email from Zuckerberg revealed at the trial. It was widely reported at the time that Snapchat rejected a $3 billion takeover attempt from Facebook.

“At this point, we should probably prepare for it to leak that we offered $6b for them and all the negative that will come from that,” Zuckerberg wrote in the email.

While being questioned by an FTC attorney, Zuckerberg said he thought Snapchat “wasn’t growing at the potential that it could” and believed he could improve it.

The government introduced the email to try to bolster its argument that Meta sought to maintain its dominance in the social media market through acquisitions rather than competition.

Facebook isn’t really for friends anymore

While under questioning by the FTC, Zuckerberg said that Facebook had greatly evolved since he launched the platform more than 20 years ago and that its main purpose wasn’t really to connect with friends anymore.

The FTC argues that Meta monopolizes the market for “personal social networking services.”

“The friend part has gone down quite a bit,” Zuckerberg testified. He said the Facebook feed has “turned into more of a broad discovery and entertainment space.”

Not impressed by WhatsApp cofounder

Zuckerberg wasn’t too impressed with one of WhatsApp’s cofounders after a 2012 meeting he had with company leadership.

“I found him fairly impressive although disappointingly (or maybe positive for us) unambitious,” Zuckerberg wrote in an email to colleagues after the meeting, it was revealed at trial.

Jan Koum and Brian Acton cofounded WhatsApp in 2009. Zuckerberg said in his testimony that he thinks he was referring to Koum.

Asked about his email, Zuckerberg seemed uneasy.

He said that Koum was clearly smart but that he and Acton were staunchly opposed to growing their messaging app enough to be a real threat to Facebook. Zuckerberg would go on to buy WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion.