Instagram grew far larger than zuckerberg ever imagined possible – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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FTC v. Meta: the antitrust battle over Instagram and WhatsApp

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Lauren Feiner
Instagram grew far larger than Zuckerberg ever imagined.

Instagram’s growth was never preordained, Zuckerberg says, and the app benefited from Meta’s investment to get to the massive reach it has today. At the time of the deal in 2012, Zuckerberg hoped to grow Instagram from 10 million to 100 million users. It reached a billion users by 2018. Had Meta not bought Instagram, Zuckerberg says, “it’s very hard to know” how things would have turned out. That’s a key challenge for the FTC to address.

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