• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 13, 2025

Previewing its defense to antitrust charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission, Meta Platforms said Wednesday that it acquired photo-sharing service Instagram and messaging platform WhatsApp in order to improve them.

“Neither the Instagram nor the WhatsApp acquisition was anticompetitive,” Meta says in papers filed with U.S. District Court Judge Boasberg in Washington, D.C. 

“Meta acquired both with the intent to make those apps better for U.S. consumers as standalone services alongside Facebook, and that was the effect of the transactions,” the company adds.

The company also submitted a list of witnesses it plans to call, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and executives from other tech companies including Alphabet, TikTok, X and Pinterest.

Meta's filing comes in advance of a trial slated to begin April 14. The company is fighting antitrust charges by the Federal Trade Commission, which argues that Meta monopolized the “personal social networking” services market by acquiring Instagram (purchased for $1 billion in 2012) and (bought for $19 billion in 2014).

Meta and the FTC previewed their arguments at the upcoming trial in a joint statement submitted Wednesday to Boasberg.

The FTC wrote that it plans to argue Meta acquired Instagram and WhatsApp instead of “competing on the merits,” adding that the moves “harmed the competitive process, stifled competition, maintained and bolstered barriers to entry, and thereby harmed consumers.”

Meta countered it will argue that its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram “achieved massive and indisputable efficiencies and procompetitive benefits.”

The social media platform also says it will argue that the FTC can't prove Meta is a monopoly.

“The FTC has no direct evidence that Meta has the power to raise prices above the competitive level or reduce output or quality below a competitive level,” the company writes.

It adds that it lacks monopoly power because it has “obvious competitors” including TikTok, YouTube and iMessage.