(Bloomberg) – Mark Zuckerberg argued in the Federal Court that the social networks of his company are not just about friends, and take the stand as the first witness for the US Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial. Zuckerberg said people can contact friends and family with friends and family. “However, we have always been a service that you can discover and learn what is going on in the world.” The FTC wants Meta Platforms Inc. Breaking up, arguing that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 respectively gave it an illegal monopoly to share with friends and family. Zuckerberg disputed the allegations of the FTC and argued that Meta was competing with a greater variety of social media companies that the company said included YouTube, Tiktok and Snap. In the afternoon, the questioning of the FTC’s main hearing advocate, Daniel Matheson, Zuckerberg, is described the creation of the Facebook News Feed in 2006 to facilitate “real connections with real friends”. Around the mobile app boom between 2010 and 2012, Zuckerberg struggled to get its teams to build quality products for photo-sharing. Matheson showed up an email from Zuckerberg in which he expressed his concern that it was far behind Instagram, including a message in June 2011 in which they say they ‘need to get together quickly’. In September that year, he said: “If Instagram continues to kick a mobile device, or if Google buys it, they can easily add pieces of their service over the next few years that do the copy that does now, and if they have a growing number of people’s photos, this is a real problem for us.” In February 2012, Zuckerberg wrote a message considering a purchase of Instagram “even if it costs ~ $ 500 million.” At Stand Zuckerberg, 40, is expected to be on the stand for the rest of the day and much of Tuesday. He walked in with his assistant and wore a fleet suit and a powder blue tie. The courtroom was full when he began his testimony, but spectators filtered out as the interrogation continued. Earlier Monday, the hearing began opening statements from both sides, with Chief Justice James Boasberg. Agency attorneys kicked off their arguments by calling on a long US tradition to secure a competitive market, one who accused the FTC Meta of violating. “For over 100 years, US public policy has demanded firms to compete if they want to succeed,” Matheson said in his opening statement. “The reason we are here is that Meta broke the agreement.” If the FTC reigned, a spinoff of Instagram and WhatsApp would undo years of integration between the apps, disrupting two of the most popular digital consumer products in the world and possibly eradicating hundreds of billions of dollars in the market value of Meta. It will also raise serious questions about how the government evaluates and approves transactions. The hearing is expected to take about two months and also evidence of former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg. The company argued on Monday that it is facing fierce competition from various other services, especially as social media is more about entertainment than friends and family, and that it offers users of the provable advantage. A final decision will depend on how social media is defined, and whether Meta dominates the market. The FTC will focus on how people communicate with friends and family – which it calls the market for personal social networks, which he believes consists mainly of messages and media shared between close contacts. ‘Killer Acquisitions’ The FTC argues that Meta’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp ‘killer purchases’ are preventing the companies from competing. To support the matter that Meta is a monopoly, the FTC will argue that the quality of its apps has decreased, especially noticeable with increased advertising and weakened privacy protection. Matheson encountered Meta in 2010 with a seafarer in competitive conditions, “Matheson said, referring to the growing mobile market. “They decided that the competition was too hard and that it would be easier to buy out their opponents than to compete with them.” Meta bought WhatsApp partly for an offer from Alphabet Inc. to ward off Google, which, according to Matheson, is also considering buying the business. And Meta also in 2013 Snap Inc. bought $ 6 billion, although the Snapchat owner rejected the offer. The number has not been known before, as reports at that time have captured the discussions about half. A Snap representative declined to comment. In his opening argument, Matheson said the FTC will empower “Smoking Gun” from Meta Executors, including Zuckerberg, especially one from 2012, where he described the Instagram agreement as a way to neutralize a participant. “After Meta Instagram bought, it” fundamentally manipulated “the experience offered by the service, Matheson said, making him his own more profitable Facebook product. Although it is a ‘rational business decision’, Matheson said it “offends the policy” of the antitrust laws. Multiple competitors Meta has aggressively pushed back against the claims of the FTC, arguing that it competes intensely with a variety of platforms, including BiteDance Ltd. Tiktok, Snap’s Snapchat, Google’s YouTube, Apple Inc. ‘s iMessage and Elon Musk’s X. The FTC’s case is’ in a war with the opening and a war with the law,’ Meta legislation said. Remarks, and noted that Matheson of all Meta’s competitors mentioned tapping thug only once in his opening statement. The agency says that only Snapchat competes with Meta, and that a number of other competitors in the past, including MySpace, have now been exposed. Hansen said that the use of consumers’ programs has changed dramatically over time, and has transferred to more passive involvement such as video, with Instagram’s roles, YouTube’s shorts and tapping. While the FTC is focused on people’s use of the services to communicate with friends and family, Hansen said it dropped down, with less than 20% of the Meta clients using the services for those functions in 2025. To make his point, Hansen showed on the January -2025 tiktok ban, and he noted that both Facebook and Instagram were in usage while Tiktt was off. Facebook saw 20% “more use” during that time, while the use of Instagram increased by 17%, Hansen said. “The entire case of the FTC turns to convince the court that Meta is not competing with tiktok,” Hansen said. Hansen also argued that Meta ‘has driven hundreds of billions of rands, perhaps more than a billion dollar to unmistakable benefits for consumer fellowship, resulting from the two transactions, which led to a jump in users as infrastructure improved. Meta notes that the FTC had the chance to challenge the transactions – for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 – and allowed them to continue. Meta has several key managers present in the courtroom on Monday, including the head of policy Joel Kaplan, general lawyer Jennifer Newstead and chief marketing officer Alex Schultz. In 2019, the FTC opened an investigation into Meta during the first Trump administration and sued the company in December 2020. Former FTC chairman Lina Khan under the Biden Administration has advanced the case, which is now in the hands of chairman Andrew Ferguson, who was named by President Donald Trump to stand the agency in January. (Updates with Internal Zuckerberg -E -Post in the fifth paragraph.) 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Zuckerberg says Meta has more competitors than FTC claims
