I would love to watch Mark Zuckerberg testify if federal courtrooms were open to cameras.
It was already newsworthy that he was the first witness called upon in the antitrust case brought against Meta by the Federal Trade Commission.
This conflict strikes at the very essence of what it means to be competitive and is the most comprehensive effort yet to dismantle the largest social network in the world.
Not since the fall of the Soviet Union Even a mega-corporation like AT&T had to deal with the possibility of dissolution almost forty years ago.
The lawsuit was initiated during Trump’s first term (he was utterly disgusted by Facebook at the time), relentlessly pushed by Joe Biden, and is now set to be tried in a Washington courtroom.
I remember Trump telling me that he had reversed his stance on trying to ban TikTok since Facebook posed such a danger to society.
The new sheriff in town has been courting Silicon bros like Zuck since he earned a second term. Zuck even donated $1 million to the president’s inaugural, much like many others.
Reportedly, at a recent meeting between Trump and Facebook’s CEO, the latter inquired about the likelihood of withdrawing the case. It was obviously unsuccessful.
The trial centers on Zuckerberg’s choice to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp while they were still young and fledgling businesses.
Despite Facebook’s original intent of connecting people with one another, the chief counsel for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) questioned Mark Zuckerberg about the company’s decision to prioritize displaying users engaging information from third parties in their news feeds.
“It’s the case that over time, the ‘interest’ part of that has gotten built out more than the ‘friend’ part,” added the CEO. According to him, “the ‘friend’ part has gone down quite a bit, but it’s still something we care about.”
Put simply: Ignore your pals. So 2010s. It’s over now.
Yesterday, Zuckerberg was once again in the spotlight due to his sluggish speech, according to reporters present. The attorneys with the FTC interrogated him about many emails he had written.
“We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram’s growing so fast.”
“Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos.”
“If Instagram continues to kick ass on photos, or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we’re doing now.” Facebook Camera was a complete failure.
The rapid expansion of Instagram was described by Zuck as “very scary” in another communication, adding, “we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this.” Instagram was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, while WhatsApp was acquired two years later for $19 billion.
The CEO of Facebook, Tom Alison, was emailed by Z with various options.
First Choice: Intensify Your Friending Activities. Consider erasing everyone’s graphs and starting again; it may be a wild notion.
She said, “I’m not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG.”
We have reached the interesting portion now.
The possibility that Mark’s assessment is incorrect is not new information. Do you recall his earlier remarks about virtual reality being the wave of the future?
Aside from YouTube, X, and TikTok, he might have included Snap, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO’s Max in his list of competitors in the “entertainment” sector. The fight for attention has taken center stage. The day has a limited amount of time. Having a mindshare is crucial.
Meta isn’t great at group conversations, even though Instagram is an exception; it’s all the rage now.
True, Zuckerberg has to say that he competes with screen-equipped devices because it benefits him. However, it’s not completely incorrect. Remember that there are 4 billion active users on Meta every month.
I really would want to witness the troubled CEO arguing that he is overwhelmed by a multitude of competitors.