Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., for a second day on Tuesday, testifying about his intentions for acquiring Instagram in 2012.
In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook, which is now under the umbrella of parent company Meta, alleging it was in violation of antitrust laws by buying both Instagram and WhatsApp.
FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson pressed Zuckerberg on Tuesday over his internal message exchanges from 2012 with then-Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman regarding the $1 billion bid for Instagram.
Daniel Matheson, a lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, departs following the first day of a historic antitrust trial about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions in acquiring Instagram, at Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House in Washington, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
“[What] I’ve been thinking about recently is how much we should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram and Path that are building networks that are competitive with our own,” Zuckerberg wrote to Ebersman, then agreeing with the chief financial officer when he said the purchase of Instagram would be a way to “neutralize a potential competitor.”
