Lauren Feiner

A June 2019 document says that the data privacy scandal “is the most likely significant event that would have had a negative impact on both revenue and engagement.” But even so, Meta’s research team found, “we failed to detect significant and consistent effects of sentiment (or adverse events) on these metrics.” Cobb quibbled with how the FTC’s attorney restated the finding back to him, and Boasberg noticeably leaned back in his chair and rolled his eyes after a repeated back-and-forth, before ending the proceedings for the day.

In 2018, Meta found that a majority of Facebook users came to the platform for this reason. A document from the time describes “Facebook’s core value proposition” as “robustly anchored on ‘keeping up with friends and family,’” which is exactly the trait the FTC says is unique to personal social networking services. Cobb makes a point of saying that this was true at the time, seven years ago.

Meta VP of Research Curtiss Cobb, who tracks how users feel about the brand, just took the stand. His team surveys Facebook and Instagram users about how they feel about whether the company cares about its users. In 2020, for example, the team found that “in the US this year Facebook has slid to the 21st place and falls behind all other tech companies we measured” in the metric it calls “Relative Cares About Users” or RCAU.

Drawing on filings in TikTok’s litigation against a US ban, Meta points out that TikTok has said it could take years to perform the maintenance needed to keep a US-only app running if it were separated from ByteDance. TikTok also said that reconfiguring its content moderation systems for a US-only app would reach unsustainable costs, despite serving a platform of 170 million US users. Meta is drawing a comparison to how it believes it was uniquely positioned to help Instagram with its infrastructure and content moderation because of its own scale and success.

Meta is asking about statements TikTok made in its lawsuit against the US ban of its app to show that when TikTok is unavailable, users often turn to Instagram — showing that users consider it to be a substitute in at least some respect. TikTok told the court in its own case that even a temporary shutdown could cause it to permanently cede ground to competitors like Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. Earlier in the Meta trial, the company showed that TikTok’s temporary shutdown led to a spike in engagement for Instagram.

In a 2022 document presented to TikTok’s leadership, the company wrote that Instagram would likely make Reels its “no. 1 format.” TikTok predicted, “Instagram will redesign the interface and consolidate everything to Reels to make the short-form video first.”

Presser is reluctant to say so straightforwardly, testifying that’s not exactly how he thinks about it. But Meta’s attorney shows him a 2021 internal document where TikTok wrote, “YouTube and Instagram are TikTok’s most important competitors.”

Meta is trying to muddy Presser’s testimony about the distinctions between TikTok and Instagram by pulling up a filing TikTok made with an Australian regulator, arguing against an age restriction exemption for YouTube. “Today, TikTok, Reels and Shorts are virtually — and deliberately — indistinguishable in function and user experience,” the company wrote in March. Presser reiterates that while their features are very similar, the experience of the content on each app is different.

Presser says that only a “very minuscule” percentage of time spent on TikTok is in the friends tab — just about 1 percent. They keep it around in hopes that eventually it will help enhance users’ experiences, he says. Similarly, only a small percentage of users upload their contact lists from their address book or from Instagram and Facebook, he says, reinforcing the FTC’s argument that users don’t really go to TikTok to connect with their real-life connections.