Meta’s executive president Mark Zuckerberg considered dismembering the popular photo sharing app in 2018 in anticipation of a possible antitrust analysis, according to a document displayed at a trial in Washington, DC on Tuesday (15).
The document was shown during the second day of Zuckerberg’s testimony in a high -risk trial, in which the US Federal Trade Commission seeks to undo the acquisition of valuable Instagram assets and WhatsApp by the goal.
“I wonder if we should consider the extreme measure of turning Instagram into a separate company,” said Zuckerberg into a memorandum discussing possible strategies on how to rearrange the family of social media application.
“As the requests to break up large technology companies, there is an unnatural chance that we are forced to break up Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp over the next 5 to 10 years,” he wrote.
The case, opened during President Donald Trump’s first term, is seen as a test for the new government’s promises to face major technology companies.
“Instagram was better”
Zuckerberg also witnessed that the goal bought Instagram because he had a “better” camera than the one his company was trying to build under his main brand, Facebook, at the time.
Recognition seemed to reinforce the allegations of the US antitrust authorities that the goal had used a “buying or burying” strategy to snap out potential rivals, keep smaller competitors at a distance and maintain an illegal monopoly.
The statement was made during the second day of Zuckerberg’s testimony at the trial in Washington, in which the US Federal Trade Commission is trying to undo the acquisitions of the Instagram and WhatsApp goal.
Asked by a commission lawyer if he thought the Instagram, rapidly growing, could be destructive to the goal, then known as Facebook, Zuckerberg said he believed Instagram had a better camera product than Facebook was developing.
“We were doing a building analysis versus buys” during the process of creating a camera app, said Zuckerberg. “I thought Instagram was better about it, so I thought it would be better to buy it.”
Zuckerberg also acknowledged that many of the company’s attempts to create their own applications have failed.
“Creating a new app is difficult”
“Creating a new app is difficult and most of the time, when we try to create a new app, it has not gained much traction,” Zuckerberg told the court.
“We probably tried to create dozens of apps throughout the company’s history and most of them didn’t work out,” he added.
Zuckerberg’s testimony occurs at the time the goal is defending, years after the disclosure of delicate statements taken from Facebook documents, such as a 2008 email in which he said that “it is better to buy than to compete.”
The company argues that its past intentions are irrelevant because the US Federal Trade Commission has defined the social media market inaccurately and did not take into account the strong competition that the goal has faced by the Alphabet Youtube, Youtube Tiktok and Apple’s messaging application.
The commission accuses the goal of stopping the monopoly of platforms used to share content with friends and family, and its main competitors in the United States are Snap Snapchat and Mewe, a small social media application focused on the privacy launched in 2016.
The platforms where users transmit content to strangers based on shared interests such as X, Tiktok, YouTube and Reddit are not interchangeable, the organ argues.
Ads
Zuckerberg also contested the commission’s claim that the goal can show more ads to users because it has no competitors, another fundamental pillar of the case.
Although antitrust processes are usually based on a monopolist’s ability to increase prices for customers, the agency highlighted the goal’s ability to decrease the quality of applications that users access for free, for example, increasing the number of ads.
Zuckerberg has rejected the idea that more ads are equivalent to a worse user experience, saying that ads on goal apps have improved and that their system is designed to “show more advertising content to people who like to see advertising content.”
The goal even considered the introduction of a feed only with ads, Zuckerberg suggested when questioned by committee lawyer Daniel Matheson.
“I think we have already discussed this at different times, but I don’t think we did it,” said Zuckerberg.
This content was originally published in document: Zuckerberg considered separating Instagram during antitrust analysis on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
