Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a key concession during a U.S. antitrust trial, admitting that he purchased Instagram because it had a superior camera feature compared to Facebook’s own app development efforts at the time. This statement came on the second day of Zuckerberg’s testimony, reinforcing claims by U.S. antitrust enforcers that Meta used a “buy or bury” strategy to suppress smaller competitors and maintain a monopoly.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently seeking to unwind Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, marking a significant challenge for the company. When asked about Instagram’s potential impact on Facebook, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the photo-sharing platform’s camera capabilities were more advanced than Facebook’s. He explained, “We were doing a build vs. buy analysis…I thought Instagram was better at that, so I thought it was better to buy them.”
During the trial, Zuckerberg also acknowledged the challenges of creating successful apps, admitting that many of Meta’s app development efforts failed. “Building a new app is hard,” he said, noting that most of the company’s attempts to develop new apps did not gain traction.
Meta’s defense focuses on the claim that competition in the social media market has been intense, with platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Apple’s messaging app posing significant threats to Meta. The FTC, however, maintains that Meta’s control over platforms for sharing content among family and friends constitutes an illegal monopoly.
Source: Swifteradio.com
