Goal’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, deposed on Monday at a high-risk judgment in Washington, in which US antitrust authorities accuse the company of spending billions of dollars on Instagram and Whatsapp to neutralize Facebook competitors.
The Federal Commission of Commerce (FTC) seeks to force the goal to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, testing the promises of US President Donald Trump to face major technology companies and, at the same time, representing an existential threat to the company, which, according to some estimates, obtains about half of its US advertising revenue with Instagram.
Wearing dark suit and light blue tie, Zuckerberg answered the questions calmly and tried to counter the allegations that the goal would have bought these companies for a decade ago to eliminate competition between social networking platforms aimed at friends and family connections.
The executive pointed out that sharing between friends and family was just one of the application’s priorities, along with the discovery of new content.
He stated that a 2018 decision that prioritized friends shared content on Facebook, instead of videos and other public posts, failed to capture users’ behavior change, who began to share more via private messages than through feed updates.
“I don’t think we understand how online social engagement was evolving,” said Zuckerberg.
“People continued to engage with more and more things than their friends were doing,” he said.
He estimated that currently about 20% of Facebook content and 10% on Instagram is generated by users of users, in contrast to interest -based accounts.
Competition with Tiktok
FTC pointed to emails in which Zuckerberg proposed the acquisition of the Instagram photo sharing app as a way to neutralize a possible Facebook competitor and expressed concern that the Whatsapp encrypted messaging service could turn into a social network.
The goal argued that their Instagram acquisitions in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 benefited users, and that past zuckerberg statements are no longer relevant amid competition from Google’s YouTub, YouTube, and Apple’s messaging app.
The way users spend time on social media and which services they consider interchangeable will be fundamental to the case. The goal will argue that an increase in Instagram and Facebook traffic during Tiktok’s brief shutdown in the United States in January demonstrates direct competition.
The FTC claims that the goal holds the monopoly of the platforms used to share content with friends and family, and its main competitors in the United States are 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, have argued FTC.
Federal District Judge James Boasberg said in a decision in November that the FTC “faces difficult questions about whether its allegations can be held in the trial.”
The trial can extend until July. If the FTC wins, it will have to prove separately what measures like forcing the goal to sell Instagram or WhatsApp would restore the competition.
Losing the Instagram in particular could be catastrophic for the financial results of the goal.
Although the goal does not disclose application -specific revenue figures, advertising research company Emarketer projected in December that Instagram would generate $ 37.13 billion this year, just over half of the US goal ads.
Instagram also generates more revenue per user than any other social platform, including Facebook, according to Emarketer.
To date, WhatsApp has contributed only to a small part of the total revenue of the goal, but it is the company’s largest app in daily users and is increasing efforts to make money from tools such as chatbots.
Zuckerberg said these “commercial messages” services will probably boost the company’s next wave of growth.
This content was originally published in Zuckerberg disputes US Antitrust Case against Goal in Testimonial on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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