Based on some of the ideas Mark has proposed over the years, Meta could have turned out very differently.
In an echo of an infamous exchange from one of Zuckerberg’s earlier visits to Washington, Judge James Boasberg asks the CEO to clarify how iMessage and WhatsApp make money. Zuckerberg explains that Meta sells ads that send people to chat with businesses on WhatsApp. He also tells the judge that he thinks Apple is incentivized to keep iMessage exclusive to iOS so that its users don’t want to switch from iPhones to Android.
When asked by Meta’s lead lawyer, Mark Hansen, Zuckerberg says he doesn’t know what MeWe is and “hadn’t heard of it” prior to this case. Aside from Snapchat, MeWe is the other app the government says is in the same “personal social networking services” market that Meta allegedly monopolizes.
As an aside to a question about European regulations, Zuckerberg says that “it seems no matter what we do, the European Union seems to find we’re not following their rules.”
The company has been hammered by legislators and parents for how it sucks users into its services, but Zuckerberg says Meta focuses on creating valuable experiences, rather than making sure users stay engaged for as long as possible.
“I don’t want the team to just say, ‘oh this variant of the algorithm, people spend 20 seconds more in, so we’ll ship this,’” he says.
FTC attorney Daniel Matheson just passed Zuckerberg as a witness. Zuckerberg has been on the stand for roughly eight hours so far between today and yesterday. Now it’s Meta’s lead attorney Mark Hansen’s turn to question the CEO.
But he’s not giving them much to work with. The government wants to show that Meta dominates a distinct market of social apps for connecting with family and friends that only includes Snapchat and MeWe, a crucial element of proving its case.
Zuckerberg says that apps like TikTok might not explicitly market themselves that way, but “they’ve certainly taken steps” to promote friend connections by doing things like prompting users to import contacts.
He seems resistant to the idea that the professional social network is all that different from his own offerings nowadays. The FTC argues that the market Meta dominates is primarily about sharing content with family and friends, which would exclude services like LinkedIn and Nextdoor that market themselves for more specialized functions. According to Zuckerberg, “all of these are quite a bit more competitive” with Meta’s apps.
Zuckerberg revealed this after the FTC attorney prodded him about whether people come to Facebook or Instagram just to look at ads. “You’ve never chosen to offer a feed of just ads,” the FTC’s Daniel Matheson says. “I think we’ve discussed it at one point,” Zuckerberg responds.