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Mark Zuckerberg testified that China-owned TikTok was a “highly urgent” competitive threat to Meta – as he looked to derail the FTC’s bid to break up the owner of Facebook and Instagram at a landmark antitrust trial in Washington.
Zuckerberg, who testified on Wednesday for the third straight day in the case, sought to bolster Meta’s argument that it faces fierce competition from TikTok, Google-owned YouTube and other platforms for user attention.
“We observed that our growth slowed down dramatically [as TikTok rose in popularity in 2018],” Zuckerberg said in response to questions from Meta’s lead attorney Mark Hansen, according to Bloomberg.
“It was highly urgent. This has been a top priority for the company for several years,” Zuckerberg added.
The FTC has argued that Zuckerberg used a “buy or bury” strategy to acquire upstarts like Instagram and WhatsApp before they could challenge Meta’s monopoly. As part of that case, the agency has defined Meta as dominant over the market for social media platforms built on friends-and-family connections, with Snapchat as its only real competitor.
Zuckerberg has pushed back, claiming on the witness stand that Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram now “serve primarily as discovery engines” and are less reliant on the friends-and-family model. He has pointed to TikTok, Google-owned YouTube and Apple’s iMessage as direct competitors.
“People will be sharing in new ways in five years than what is happening today,” Zuckerberg added.
Zuckerberg also disputed the government’s allegation that he bought Instagram to stifle a competitor, arguing that the transaction helped rather than hurt the app’s growth.
The Facebook founder had faced a grilling earlier in the week from FTC attorneys who used Zuckerberg’s own words in past emails and messages as evidence of Meta’s anticompetitive practices.
The feds showed a 2018 document in which Zuckerberg privately acknowledged that the company’s ownership of Instagram was likely to draw antitrust scrutiny.
“I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company,” Zuckerberg said, according to the document.
“As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps Whatsapp in the next 5-10 years anyway,” he added.
In another 2012 email exchange, Zuckerberg acknowledged to ex-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” in-app camera feature than what Facebook had built at the time.
Elsewhere, the FTC revealed that Zuckerberg had once offered a $6 billion to acquire Snapchat – but was turned down by its CEO Evan Spiegel.
Zuckerberg’s testimony was expected to conclude Wednesday afternoon. Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer at Facebook, is set to testify once he exits.
Before the trial began, Meta had furiously lobbied President Trump to approve a settlement that would allow Zuckerberg to avoid appearing in court.
Zuckerberg reportedly called FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in late March and made an offer of just $450 million to settle the agency’s claims. That was just a fraction of the $30 billion settlement sought by Ferguson.
The billionaire countered with an offer of nearly $1 billion, while Ferguson said he wouldn’t approve anything less than $18 billion and a consent decree blocking Meta from monopolistic practices.
The pre-trial settlement talks ultimately failed – though a deal could theoretically occur at any point in the trial. Ferguson and other FTC officials are adamant that they are prepared to fight the case through its conclusion.