Mark Zuckerberg claimed Wednesday that China-owned TikTok was a “highly urgent” competitive threat to Meta – as he looked to derail the FTC’s bid to break up the owner of Facebook and Instagram at the landmark antitrust trial in Washington.
Zuckerberg sought to bolster Meta’s argument that it faces fierce competition from TikTok, Google-owned YouTube and other platforms for user attention as he wrapped up seven hours of testimony over three days.
“We observed that our growth slowed down dramatically” as TikTok rose in popularity in 2018, Zuckerberg said in response to questions from Meta’s lead attorney Mark Hansen. “It was highly urgent. This has been a top priority for the company for several years.”
Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer at Facebook, followed Zuckerberg on the stand and is expected to return for more questioning on Thursday. She was asked about how Meta approached rival services like Instagram prior to its acquisition in 2012 and the doomed Google+ social network.
The FTC has argued that Zuckerberg used a “buy or bury” strategy to acquire upstarts like Instagram and WhatsApp before they could challenge Meta’s monopoly.
As part of that case, the agency has defined Meta as dominant over the market for social media platforms built on friends-and-family connections, with Snapchat as its only real competitor.
Zuckerberg has pushed back, claiming on the witness stand that Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram now “serve primarily as discovery engines” and are less reliant on the friends-and-family model.
“People will be sharing in new ways in five years than what is happening today,” Zuckerberg added.
Before the trial began, Meta had furiously lobbied President Trump to approve a settlement and prevent Zuckerberg from being grilled in court.
The tech titan reportedly called FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in late March and offered $450 million to settle the agency’s claims – a fraction of the $30 billion settlement sought by Ferguson.
The billionaire countered with an offer of nearly $1 billion, while Ferguson said he wouldn’t approve anything less than $18 billion and a consent decree blocking Meta from monopolistic practices, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The pre-trial settlement talks ultimately failed – though a deal could theoretically occur at any point in the trial. Ferguson and other FTC officials are adamant that they are prepared to fight the case through its conclusion.
FTC attorneys used Zuckerberg’s own words in past emails and messages as evidence of Meta’s anticompetitive practices.
Zuckerberg disputed the government’s allegation that he bought Instagram to stifle a competitor, arguing that the transaction helped the app’s growth.
The feds showed a 2018 document in which Zuckerberg privately acknowledged that the company’s ownership of Instagram was likely to draw antitrust scrutiny.
“I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company,” Zuckerberg said, according to the document.
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,” he added.
In another 2012 email exchange, Zuckerberg acknowledged to ex-CFO David Ebersman that buying Instagram would effectively “neutralize a competitor.”
Zuckerberg also admitted in court that he bought Instagram because the app had developed a “better” in-app camera feature than what Facebook had built at the time.
Elsewhere, the FTC revealed that Zuckerberg had once offered $6 billion to acquire Snapchat – but was turned down by its CEO Evan Spiegel.
