Mark Zuckerberg back in US court amid push to break up Meta

The blockbuster antitrust case against Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — has kicked off in Washington, DC, the United States.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand for the second straight day today. The landmark case accuses Meta of taking over Instagram and WhatsApp before they could become competitors.
As part of his lobbying efforts, Zuckerberg contributed to Trump’s inauguration fund and overhauled content moderation policies. He also purchased a $23m mansion in Washington in what was seen as a bid to spend more time close to the centre of political power.

But the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shown no interest in letting up its push against Meta. Trump-appointed FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in an interview on Fox Business that the agency would not let a Meta-like monopoly arise again. Ferguson’s push is not a far cry from the previous FTC Chairwoman, Lina Khan, who under former US President Joe Biden was known to be tough on Big Tech.The case could see the Facebook owner forced to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyouts.

The suit was originally filed in December 2020, during the first Trump administration, and all eyes were on whether the Republican president, on his return to the White House, would ask the FTC to stand down.

More than a decade of acquisitions
Central to the case is Facebook’s 2012 $1bn purchase of Instagram — then a small but promising photo-sharing app that now boasts two billion active users.

An email from Zuckerberg cited by the FTC showed him depicting Instagram’s emergence as “really scary” and adding that this was “why we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this”.