Zuckerberg’s antitrust testimony aired his wildest ideas in Meta’s history

Making Instagram a separate company. Buying Snapchat. Wiping everyone’s Facebook friends. Creating a feed of only ads. 

These were some of the ideas that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered over the years as he built his social media empire. Over the past two days, he talked about them from the witness stand at a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, where Meta is fighting the Federal Trade Commission on an antitrust case that could ultimately require it to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Zuckerberg has so far testified for roughly nine hours. He’s expected to continue testifying on Wednesday, followed by Sheryl Sandberg. So far, the FTC has prodded him to confirm its theory of the market and understand his motivation for acquiring nascent rivals. 

The FTC’s theory of the case is that Meta gobbled up newer competitors by buying Instagram and WhatsApp in the early 2010s, when it feared they would grow to challenge its dominance. The agency is trying to show that Meta has monopoly power in a market it calls personal social networking services, which is focused on connecting with friends and family and includes the apps Snapchat and MeWe.

Meta argues that the FTC has craf …

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