Mark Zuckerberg proved that China owned Tiktok was a “very urgent” competitive threat to Meta-since he looked to break the FTC offer to break the Facebook and Instagram owner in a historic antitrust trial in Washington.
Zuckerberg, who testified Wednesday for his third direct day in this case, tried to strengthen Meta’s argument that he faces fierce competition from Tiktok, owned by Google YouTube and other platforms for user attention.
“We observed that our growth slowed dramatically [as TikTok rose in popularity in 2018]”Zuckerberg said in response to questions from Meta’s main lawyer, Mark Hansen, according to Bloomberg.
“It was very urgent. This has been a major advantage for the company for several years,” Zuckerberg added.
FTC has argued that Zuckerberg used a “Buy or Varros” strategy to win upstarts like Instagram and WhatsApp before they could challenge Meta’s monopoly. As part of that case, the agency has defined Meta as the prevailing market of social media platforms built on friends and family connections, with Snapchat as its only real competitor.
Zuckerberg is pushed behind, claiming in the witness stand that Meta Meta applications like Facebook and Instagram now “serve mainly as discoveries” and are less dependent on the model of friends and family. He has shown Tiktok, owned by Google YouTube and Apple’s imessage as direct competitors.
“People will share in new ways in five years than what is happening today,” Zuckerberg added.
Zuckerberg also opposed the government’s claim that he bought Instagram to stall a competitor, arguing that the transaction helped instead of damaging the application growth.
The Facebook founder had faced a frying earlier during the week by FTC lawyers who used Zuckerberg’s own words in emails and past messages as evidence of Meta’s anticompetitive practices.
Feds showed a 2018 document in which Zuckerberg privately admitted that the company ownership for Instagram is likely to attract an antitrust check.
“I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of rotating Instagram as a separate company,” Zuckerberg said, according to the document.
“While calls to break down big technology companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to rotate Instagram and maybe WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway,” he added.
In another 2012 email exchange, Zuckerberg admitted to former 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” feature of the camera within the app than what Facebook had built at the time.
Elsewhere, FTC revealed that Zuckerberg had once offered a $ 6 billion to get Snapchat – but was rejected by her CEO Evan Spiegel.
Zuckerberg’s testimony is expected to end on Wednesday afternoon. Sheryl Sandberg, the former Operating Officer on Facebook, is set to testify after it comes out.
Before the trial began, Meta had angered President Trump to approve a solution that would allow Zuckerberg to avoid appearance in court.
Zuckerberg reportedly called FTC Mayor Andrew Ferguson in late March and made an offer of only $ 450 million to repay the agency’s claims. This was only a portion of the $ 30 billion settlement demanded by Ferguson.
The billionaire opposed a offer of nearly $ 1 billion, while Ferguson said he would approve nothing less than $ 18 billion and a decree that blocks Meta from monopolistic practices.
The preliminary settlement talks eventually failed-as an agreement could happen theoretically at any point in court. Ferguson and other FTC officials are convinced that they are prepared to fight the matter through its conclusion.
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