FTC v. Meta: in an email, Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that its success was hurting Facebook
meaning show people more ads — as a way to make more money and take some pressure off Facebook — Perhaps not surprisingly, IG's founders left the company a few months after all of this happened in September 2018 Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : But it is crazy to see stuff I had from various sources get confirmed by internal documents/emails. Also!! This is new to me, and not in my book: www.bloomberg.com/news/article... Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : Just saying, if you read No Filter, you would have known about Zuckerberg getting jealous of Instagram's growth (& why the founders left) long before this FTC trial Threads: Mike Isaac / @mike_isaac : fav email of FTC vs Meta so far — sheryl sandberg asking Mark Zuckerberg how to play settlers of catan in between a discussion about buying instagram Kurt Wagner / @kurtwag8 : New/Fun: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram into its own standalone company in 2018 A major reason: he felt Instagram was harming the Facebook social network, and spinning off IG would let them both grow without having to try and strategically work together in the same way https://www.bloomberg.com/... X: Alex Heath / @alexeheath : well, that's awkward! during the FTC v. Meta trial today, the gov showed a 2018 email in which Zuckerberg himself suggested spinning off Instagram into a “separate company” “while most companies resist break-ups, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they've been split up,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time he is currently on the witness stand in DC to keep Meta from being split up Oliver Segovia / @oliversegovia : 😂! I actually remember this idea going around the grapevine within the company in 2018-19, and I'm sure it was discussed earlier than that within M team when it was clear by 2014-15 that IG was a huge win. I do think it was partially the cause of a wave of employees who missed the FB IPO wave to want to jump ship to IG. Meghan Bobrowsky / @meghanbobrowsky : Something to keep in mind re the Meta FTC trial: Meta is trying to ramp up spending on AI infrastructure and plans to spend $65 billion this year. Losing Instagram would not only be a blow to Meta's revenue but would also likely prohibit Meta from spending more on AI. Brendan Benedict / @bbenedict33 : Wow - current email with Zuckerberg in #ftcvmeta trial shows that FB considered spinning off Instagram. Zuckerberg predicts “we may face antitrust regulation requiring us to spin out our other apps anyway.” Email is from 2018! Brendan Benedict / @bbenedict33 : The hits are really coming now. These are emails I haven't seen before. Zuckerberg in 2018 email to Mosseri, Head of IG: “I agree with you that Instagram will always need to focus on friends and can never exclusively be for public figures or will cease to be a social product.” Matt Stoller / @matthewstoller : Matheson asks if Facebook shut down investment in the Facebook camera app after the acquisition of Instagram. Zuckerberg hems and haws and then says ‘Yeah.’ That's solid evidence the purchase ended head to head competition. #FTCvMeta Rat King / @mikeisaac : been in court so no live tweeting for a bit but “mark zuckerberg proposed spinning off instagram and was girding for a day where antitrust came for Facebook” is the story for me Rat King / @mikeisaac : loving all these emails but the real thing that comes through is how mark immediately spots any even nascent threat to Facebook and shoots off emails to all his top lieutenants (at all hours of the day or night) and asks “what are we doing about this?” stressful!!! Forums: r/news : At US antitrust trial, Meta's Zuckerberg admits he bought Instagram because it was ‘better’ -
Context & Ripple Effects
The email adds a new internal record to the FTC’s effort to characterize Meta’s Instagram acquisition as anticompetitive. It follows opening arguments alleging a “buy-or-bury” approach to social-networking rivals and earlier disclosures that Facebook viewed buying Instagram as a way to avoid competition with the fast-growing photo app.
It also sharpens a tension at the center of the case: Instagram was valuable to the combined company, yet Zuckerberg’s 2018 message recognized that its growth could weaken Facebook’s product. The reported shutdown of Facebook’s competing camera app makes that internal trade-off especially relevant.
First-order effects
- The FTC gains trial evidence that can support its account of how Meta internally assessed Instagram’s competitive overlap with Facebook; Meta must place the email in the broader business context.
- The disclosure focuses attention on the post-acquisition relationship between Facebook and Instagram, including the removal of a directly competing Facebook camera product.
Second-order effects
- A stronger evidentiary record around internal acquisition rationale raises the stakes for Meta’s defense against remedies that could alter its control of Instagram, without determining the case’s outcome.
- Other platforms pursuing acquisition-led expansion may face more scrutiny of internal communications that discuss eliminating overlap or preserving a core product’s position.
Third-order effects
- If courts give substantial weight to retrospective internal documents, antitrust challenges to completed platform acquisitions may increasingly turn on whether integration displaced product-level competition, not solely on present-day market conditions.
- The case is part of a broader test of whether dominant digital platforms can retain acquired consumer services when those services later become meaningful substitutes for the acquirer’s original product.
The trend: Platform antitrust enforcement is increasingly examining whether acquisitions that were once framed as complementary later reveal lost competition inside the combined company.