Mark Zuckerberg is facing one of the most consequential legal challenges of his career as a landmark antitrust trial unfolds in a Washington, D.C. federal courtroom. At the heart of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s case against Meta, formerly Facebook, are internal emails, some over a decade old, suggesting that the tech giant’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were aimed at neutralizing potential rivals rather than fostering innovation.
The FTC alleges Meta has maintained an illegal monopoly in the personal social-networking space by systematically acquiring emerging competitors. Among the evidence presented this week were emails from Zuckerberg, including one from 2012 in which he bluntly stated, “Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion.” In another, he noted Meta should “use M&A to build a competitive moat around us on mobile and ads.”
The regulatory agency’s goal: to force Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, potentially dismantling the $1.5 trillion tech conglomerate. It’s a scenario Zuckerberg has vowed to resist, once declaring he would “go to the mat and fight” such an outcome.
However, in his defense, Zuckerberg and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg have pointed to the meteoric rise of TikTok as proof that Meta no longer holds monopoly power. Over three days of testimony, Zuckerberg emphasized ByteDance-owned TikTok’s explosive growth, claiming it now rivals — and in many ways surpasses — Meta’s offerings in the battle for user attention.
“Tiktok and Meta do have attrition from each other and are substitutes for each other in most users’ minds,” said Paul Swanson, an antitrust specialist cited in the Financial Times. “What they said and thought in the past is not a great look, but it doesn’t have much probative value for whether Meta maintains a monopoly now.”
The FTC, however, argues that the relevant market in question — “personal social-networking” services for friends-and-family communication — excludes TikTok and platforms like YouTube. This distinction is critical: if TikTok is deemed outside the relevant competitive landscape, Meta’s acquisitions could be interpreted as anti-competitive efforts to dominate a narrower market segment.
Judge James Boasberg, who is presiding over the case, has remained tight-lipped during proceedings. Yet his prior comments suggest he is open to the FTC’s framing. In a 2024 ruling, Boasberg stated the agency had “met its burden to show that other applications are not reasonable substitutes” for Meta’s core offerings.
While the FTC must prove that Meta’s dominance has harmed consumers — despite the company’s services being free — it contends that users suffer in other ways, such as diminished privacy and degraded experiences cluttered with ads.
The road to trial followed failed settlement negotiations. According to The Wall Street Journal, the FTC initially floated a $30 billion settlement. Meta countered with $450 million, later increasing it to $1 billion, still far short of the regulator’s $18 billion floor.
Perhaps most ominous for Meta’s defense are Zuckerberg’s own words from a 2018 email, in which he contemplated spinning off Instagram amid growing calls to break up Big Tech. “There is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five to ten years,” he wrote — a prediction now confronting him in court.
