Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously considered spinning off Instagram into a separate company in the face of growing antitrust concerns and competing interests with Facebook.
The revelation comes from a 2018 document that was displayed as Zuckerberg took the stand in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
“I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company,” Zuckerberg wrote in an email at the time, suggesting it would allow Meta to accomplish several “important goals.”
“While most companies resist break ups, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up,” he added. “The synergies are usually less than people think and the strategy tax is usually greater than people think.”
He pointed to growing calls to break up Big Tech that could eventually cost Meta its social media empire.
“As we consider it, we should keep in mind that there’s a real chance that all our work to build a family of apps may be something we don’t get to keep,” he said.
Meta is currently on trial in an antitrust case that could result in a breakup of the company. The FTC has accused Meta of entrenching its alleged social networking monopoly with its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
When asked about the email Tuesday, Zuckerberg said he was taking into account the way politics were moving at the time.
Antitrust enforcement against major tech firms has ramped up significantly in recent years, spanning both the Trump and Biden administrations.
The FTC sued Meta in 2020, the same year the Department of Justice (DOJ) brought an antitrust case against Google for allegedly monopolizing online search. A federal judge sided with the government in the Google case last August.
In 2023, the DOJ brought a second case against Google, followed by a case against Apple in 2024. The FTC also filed an antitrust suit against Amazon in 2023.
Beyond the antitrust motivations, Zuckerberg pointed to the potential strategic incentives of splitting Instagram from the rest of Meta.
The FTC showed several documents Tuesday highlighting Zuckerberg’s concerns in 2018 about the impact of Facebook and Instagram on one another.
In early 2018, Zuckerberg urged the company to begin shifting its advertising load toward Instagram, as Facebook struggled, according to internal emails. He later warned that Instagram’s growth could lead to “cannibalization and network collapse” for Facebook.
Zuckerberg has sought to frame the decision to increase ads on Instagram as a strategic decision for Meta as a whole. However, the FTC pointed to the increased ad load as a potential harm to consumers in its opening arguments Monday.
The Meta CEO has spent the last two days on the witness stand, after unsuccessfully appealing to President Trump to settle the case before it headed to trial.
