FTC v. Meta live: updates from the battle for Instagram and WhatsApp do sex sex to

LIVEUpdated Today, Apr 30, 2025, 2:12 PM UTCFTC v. Meta live: updates from the battle for Instagram and WhatsAppby Lauren Feiner and Alex HeathLinkFacebookThreadsRSSThe long-awaited antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicked off on April 14th. Over about two months, DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg is hearing arguments about whether then-Facebook illegally monopolized the market for “personal social networking services” through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.The FTC first brought the case in late 2020. While it was initially thrown out by the judge, he let an amended version move forward after the government beefed up details about why it thinks Meta is a monopoly. This phase of the trial will help the judge determine if Meta is liable for breaking antitrust law. If he finds that to be true, he’ll later rule on how those harms should be remedied. The FTC is pushing for Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off.This is the third US trial seeking to break up Big Tech in recent years, following the Justice Department’s two separate cases against Google over its search and ad tech businesses.Read below for all of our updates on the FTC v. Meta case.HighlightsInstagram co-founder: Zuckerberg saw us as a ‘threat’ to FacebookThe government doesn’t understand MetaZuckerberg tells court he made WhatsApp and Instagram betterZuckerberg’s wildest ideas in Meta’s historyMark Zuckerberg takes the standToday, 19 seconds agoLauren FeinerYahoo once paid $1 billion for an unprofitable tech startup, too.Meta is trying to draw an analogy between Yahoo’s $1 billion acquisition of Tumblr in 2013 with Meta’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram for the same price. Tumblr wasn’t making a profit when it was acquired but had a large user base. A big difference, of course, is the trajectory of each startup. When Meta’s attorney asks if Tumblr’s subsequent sale to Automattic was “significantly less” than $10 million, Tucker says, “I saw a joke that it was near the price of a modest home in Silicon Valley.”Today, 27 minutes agoLauren FeinerTumblr’s former CTO tells the court about fandoms.Eli Tucker is walking the court through the blogging platform, including its app store listing that describes it with the words, “Fandom, Art, Chaos.” Just like the FTC did with Pinterest, Strava, and Reddit, the government is trying to show Judge Boasberg that the way these other platforms are designed and used are more about connecting over interests than with friends — and therefore outside of the market Meta allegedly monopolizes.Apr 29Lauren FeinerApple lists its messages app under social networking.Meta is pointing out on cross-examination that Apple has chosen to list its own messaging app in this category on the App Store, suggesting there may be more overlap with Meta’s services than the FTC would argue.Apr 29Lauren FeinerApple hasn’t considered putting ads in its messaging app.Shah testifies that would probably be “distracting” for users who just want to focus on their conversations with friends.Apr 29Lauren Feiner‘Who are all these people?’In a screenshot of an example group chat, “Momma Chloe” asks this — presumably because she doesn’t have most of the messengers’ numbers. The FTC is making the point that iMessage users don’t have profiles that automatically populate if a user doesn’t already have someone else’s info — making it different from the social apps Meta runs. It’s a bit of a painstaking line of questioning for anyone who already uses iMessage regularly, but it’s driving home the point but the app is distinct from a personal social networking app.Apr 29Lauren FeinerAn Apple iMessage exec is up next.Ronak Shah, director of product management who oversees services like iMessage and Safari as well as user privacy and security, is now testifying remotely. We’ll likely hear more about the messaging space that WhatsApp competes in.Apr 29Lauren FeinerMeta prepared for a ‘flood in traffic’ ahead of the TikTok ban.The company invested extra to make sure it’s infrastructure wouldn’t melt down if TikTok were suddenly to go dark in the US after the ban took effect. Meta feared that “the flood in traffic of all those users coming to Reels … could potentially overwhelm our data centers to the point that our site would go down,” Olivan testifies. The company was already aware that Reels usage is higher in India, for example, where TikTok is banned.Apr 29Lauren FeinerIt’s now ‘extremely easy’ to build a social graph from scratch.All social network apps have to do to figure out who their users are connected with is ask for permission to read the address book on their phones, Olivan says, which is something most do when users first join an app. This pushes back on the FTC’s theory about the importance of network effects to Meta’s dominance — meaning that the more users are on a platform, the more value it has to those users.Apr 29Lauren Feiner‘We wanted it to be one of the biggest apps in the world.’Rather than stifle Instagram, Olivan testifies that Meta wanted the app to thrive after it acquired it. In a 2012 email after the acquisition was announced, Olivan said the startup founders were “barely being able to keep the site up & running” because of the influx of sign-ups. He suggested helping the app with translations and analytics that would help it grow, using existing frameworks that Facebook had already used.Apr 29Lauren FeinerFacebook didn’t fear WhatsApp becoming a social competitor.Olivan says “there was no signs of them morphing into anything else” besides a replacement for SMS messaging. Besides the founders’ distaste for social features, Olivan says that the way WhatsApp grew outside the US — through arbitrage of high international telecom SMS fees — didn’t exist in the US. He flatly testifies that Meta did not buy WhatsApp because it feared the app becoming a social network competitor.Apr 29Lauren FeinerCambridge Analytica hit Facebook’s reputation, but its user numbers saw less impact.Even though the 2018 data scandal led users to view Facebook’s brand more negatively, Olivan concedes it had a relatively lower impact on users actually deactivating their accounts. The FTC seems to be positioning this as a measure of Meta’s alleged monopoly power, since the ability to raise prices without losing customers is a common indicator of such power.Apr 29Lauren FeinerMeta was willing to sacrifice some Instagram growth to grow the whole pie.Facebook has at points worried about cannibalizing its flagship platform by promoting users moving to Instagram. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom described this in his testimony as Meta depriving Instagram of resources to favor Facebook Blue. But Olivan says it’s okay for one side of the business to shrink a little if growth expands overall. “As long as this one grows much more, I’m willing to take a little hit on the other one,” he says.Apr 29Lauren FeinerFacebook worried most about Google or Apple buying WhatsApp.“Out of all the potential buyers, I thought Google and Apple would be the worst ones because they already ran the operating systems of the phones,” Olivan testifies. They were “particularly dangerous acquirers because they have an unfair advantage on us” by running the underlying operating system, he says.Apr 29Lauren FeinerGoogle had a ‘long shot’ chance of becoming competitive in social with WhatsApp.Olivan describes a “huge chain of ifs” that might have led Google to becoming a significant social player in at least some countries around the world, had it acquired WhatsApp — something he and other Facebook execs feared in 2012. Two of those “ifs” would be if Google would run a social app without killing it, and whether it could convince WhatsApp’s founders to add social features, which they infamously resisted.Apr 29Lauren FeinerFacebook didn’t know how it would make money from WhatsApp.“The plan was to figure it out down the line,” Olivan testifies about the $19 billion acquisition. After all, he says. “Mark didn’t have a plan for how to monetize Facebook when he started it, either.”Apr 29Lauren FeinerFacebook floated starting from scratch on messaging.In 2013, the company’s-then director of corporate development Amin Zoufonoun wrote that perhaps Facebook needs “a separate, free sms focused and branded messenger product to compete in this space if we cannot buy whatsapp. Zoufonoun worried “that FB messenger, with its legacy connotations may not do it in the space defined by whatsapp no matter what we do.” Olivan, who had recently taken over the Messenger team, advocated for improving the existing app, instead.Apr 29Lauren FeinerWhatsApp showed ‘absolutely no signs of morphing’ into a social app.Even though Facebook closely tracked WhatsApp’s growth in 2012 and 2013 alongside other mobile messaging apps — some of which were adding social features — Olivan says they were not concerned about WhatsApp trying to become a social network. The app only aimed to be a replacement for SMS messaging in countries where telcos charged high rates for the service, Olivan testifies. Still, several documents show Facebook executives tracking WhatsApp’s growth with concern about how it stacked up to Facebook Messenger’s.Apr 29Lauren FeinerFacebook exec worried about losing the business to mobile messaging apps.Olivan opposed letting competing messenger apps advertise on Facebook’s platform because he worried it was a bad tradeoff to a make a quick buck. He’s testified repeatedly he doesn’t like to help competitors, and wrote in a 2013 email that “we will look like complete idiots if we lose our business to these messenger services and help them along the way for a couple of $s.” He testifies he was “being a bit hyperbolic.”Apr 29Lauren Feiner‘I was really worried that this could become the end.’Olivan testifies that he was “paranoid” as head of growth in 2012 about the expansion of mobile messaging apps into social apps, especially in countries where Facebook’s flagship app had less of a stronghold. In a 2012 message, Olivan told a colleague he worried that the shift to mobile combined with “messengers growing organically with huge retention and virality = potential recipe for not be around in a couple ... years from now.”Apr 29Lauren Feiner‘This shit is getting scary.’Olivan, who previously managed Facebook’s messaging efforts, asked staff in a 2012 email to “compile a ‘this shit is getting scary deck’ given all the data we have now” about the growth of messaging apps worldwide, which were also adding social features. Olivan wanted to circulate the deck to Facebook leadership “with a message: we really need to double down on messenger / our messenger is broken.”Apr 29Lauren FeinerMeta COO Javier Olivan kicks off day 10 of trial.Olivan is poking holes in the FTC’s market definition which relies on the way users come to Facebook and Instagram to connect with friends and family they know in real life. He says he’s actually been surprised to learn there’s some users who engage on Facebook without any connections at all — though he can’t say how many people that is.Apr 28Lauren FeinerMore cloud talk.Microsoft Azure executive Jason Vallery gives even more detail about how cloud services can help companies efficiently run their businesses at relatively low cost, even without their own massive data centers. Again, this speaks to the FTC’s argument that a company like Instagram could have scaled without Meta’s help. In a 2023 deposition, Vallery talks about how customers use cloud services for their cost, capability, and security benefits.Apr 28Lauren FeinerAn AWS exec testifies about how startups can scale with its cloud.In a 2023 deposition, AWS general manager for sales Jason Bennett testified about how companies use its services to run their businesses. Instagram used AWS prior to its acquisition, but we’ve also heard from other AWS customers like Pinterest and Reddit. The testimony seems meant to demonstrate that Instagram theoretically could have scaled with AWS, even without access to Meta’s infrastructure.Apr 28Lauren FeinerFacebook execs worried Google would buy WhatsApp and make it ‘a cross-platform iMessage.’Benjamin Davenport, who became part of Facebook Messenger’s founding team after his mobile messaging app Beluga was acquired, testified in a 2022 deposition that he worried in 2012 that Google could acquire WhatsApp and “bake it into Android.” Google could then make WhatsApp the default option on the operating system, and quickly growing its distribution, he says. Davenport wrote in a 2012 message that Google could create “a cross-platform iMessage with a far larger network.”Apr 28Lauren FeinerPinterest once saw Instagram as an ‘existential threat.’In a 2017 competitive assessment, Pinterest warned that Instagram was “taking direct aim at our core turf.” On cross-examination, Meta is working to show that Pinterest actually does see itself in direct competition with its products. At the time, Pinterest noted there was a “rapid increase in customer overlap” with Instagram and the app was even “replicating” some of its own features, like the ability to save pictures.More StoriesMost PopularMost PopularAmazon has no choice but to display tariffs on prices nowSlate Auto confirms where it’ll build its $20,000 TruckNew Starlink subscription drops hardware price to $0Duolingo will replace contract workers with AIThe DJI Phantom is no moreInstallerA weekly newsletter by David Pierce designed to tell you everything you need to download, watch, read, listen to, and explore that fits in The Verge’s universe.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad