Zuckerberg’s emails raise breakup fears as Meta faces antitrust heat

Zuckerberg’s email also suggested that splitting companies could yield benefits.

Mark Zuckerberg once seriously considered spinning off Instagram from Meta, according to internal emails presented by the US Federal Trade Commission during a landmark antitrust trial that could lead to the break-up of the $1.5 trillion tech giant, the Financial Times reported.

In a confidential 2018 email shared in court on Tuesday, Zuckerberg acknowledged a “non-trivial chance” that Meta would be “forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five to ten years” as public and political scrutiny of tech monopolies grew. “Even if we wanted to keep the apps together we may not be able to,” the Meta CEO wrote to top executives.

The internal correspondence became a focal point on the second day of a high-stakes trial in Washington, where the FTC is arguing that Meta’s past acquisitions — notably Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion — were aimed at neutralizing potential competitors and cementing a social media monopoly.

The FTC, empowered by a renewed antitrust push under Donald Trump’s second term, is asking the court to unwind those deals.

Managing internal tensions

The 2018 email revealed deep internal debates within Meta about how to manage its growing portfolio of apps. At the time, Instagram’s explosive growth was creating friction with Facebook’s team, which was still Meta’s main profit engine.

Zuckerberg wrote that Meta had reduced its efforts to promote Instagram through Facebook to avoid triggering a “network collapse” of Facebook. He also expressed concern that Meta’s structure was “lopsided” and said the company was “operationally inefficient” because of tensions between Facebook and Instagram leadership.

He floated the idea of spinning off Instagram as a way to lessen internal conflict, retain Instagram’s founder Kevin Systrom, and allow the app’s team to grow independently.

In court, Zuckerberg explained that the company struggled to openly discuss strategy without risking “demoralising Kevin or people running Instagram.” Systrom eventually left Meta in September 2018 amid growing centralization of control by Facebook.

Break-up as a possible positive

Zuckerberg’s email also suggested that splitting companies could yield benefits. “Most companies resist break-ups, [but] corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up,” he wrote.

When asked by FTC lawyers to elaborate on which corporate cases he was referencing, Zuckerberg said he couldn’t recall any specific examples.

He also wrote, “I’m not saying we should actually do this now… But we should keep in mind that there’s a real chance that all our work to build a family of apps may be something we don’t get to keep.”

Antitrust reckoning

The emails could prove central to the FTC’s argument that Meta’s dominance in social media is the result of anti-competitive behaviour rather than organic growth. The case is widely seen as the first major test of Trump’s newly emboldened FTC, which has vowed to continue its crackdown on Big Tech.

Meta, for its part, has dismissed the charges, arguing that the acquisitions were legally approved and that Instagram and WhatsApp have thrived due to Meta’s investment and infrastructure.

The outcome of the case could have far-reaching consequences not only for Meta but also for how the US government regulates corporate consolidation in the tech industry. If the FTC succeeds, it would mark a rare example of the courts forcing a major company to divest its prized assets years after regulators originally cleared the deals.