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Zuckerberg Weighed Spinning Off Instagram Amid Antitrust Concerns, Trial Reveals

By  |  April 15, 2025

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered the radical move of spinning off Instagram into a separate company, anticipating regulatory backlash over the social media giant’s growing dominance, according to internal company documents presented Tuesday in a federal court in Washington, D.C.

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    The revelation emerged during Zuckerberg’s second day of testimony in a closely watched antitrust trial, where the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking to dismantle Meta’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp. The trial, according to Reuters, is part of a broader effort to assess whether Meta unlawfully stifled competition through strategic acquisitions.

    In a memo dating back to 2018, Zuckerberg raised the idea of severing ties with Instagram, acknowledging the potential for increased government pressure. “I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company,” he wrote. Per Reuters, he further warned of the growing momentum behind antitrust calls: “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.”

    The trial, filed under the Trump administration, is widely viewed as a litmus test for how aggressively regulators might go after Big Tech. According to Reuters, it underscores the government’s assertion that Meta pursued a “buy or bury” strategy to neutralize rising threats in the social media space.

    Related: Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta in FTC Antitrust Trial Over Instagram and WhatsApp

    During Tuesday’s testimony, Zuckerberg acknowledged that Instagram’s technology at the time of its acquisition was superior to Facebook’s own camera app, citing this as a primary reason for the $1 billion purchase. “We were doing a build vs. buy analysis,” he told the court. “I thought that Instagram was better at that, so I thought it was better to buy them.”

    The FTC argues that Meta’s acquisition spree was not merely about innovation, but rather a calculated move to eliminate emerging competitors. The agency claims that by absorbing popular platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta secured a dominant position in social networking, making it difficult for new entrants to gain a foothold.

    Zuckerberg pushed back on these claims, stating that Meta faces fierce competition from rivals such as TikTok, YouTube, and Apple’s iMessage platform—rivals he believes the FTC fails to adequately account for in its case.

    The Meta chief also reflected on the company’s own rocky history of developing successful standalone apps, noting that many of its efforts failed to gain traction. “Building a new app is hard and many more times than not when we have tried to build a new app it hasn’t gotten a lot of traction,” Zuckerberg admitted in court. “We probably tried building dozens of apps over the history of the company and the majority of them don’t go anywhere.”

    His testimony follows years of scrutiny sparked by internal communications, including a 2008 email in which he infamously stated, “it is better to buy than compete”—a line that has become emblematic of the FTC’s central argument.

    Source: Reuters