Zuck sure friends don't really matter in social

#302: Surprise testimony from the founder of social as he seeks to derail the FTA's attack that aims to redraw the future of Big Tech...

Meta’s stratospheric growth to social media kingpin was not based on genius, but on a “buy-or-bury” strategy designed to kneecap competition, the antitrust court heard.

In a big opening day, the Federal Trade Commission painted Meta as a cut and paste merchant - pinching, killing, or copying rivals and key features.

Facebook was stalling, the FTC said, so Zuck bought his rivals to restart growth and create an unassailable moat in social and build a $164.5 billion advertising juggernaut.

In an unexpected move, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand to admit he flubbed on social and missed the public mood, forcing him to pivot the platform.

His uncharacteristic hubris was a ploy to bolster Meta’s primary defence, so lock that in your mind, and I’ll come back to that shortly.

What the FTC wants is Meta broken up and forced to sell its two highest-profile acquisitions - Instagram and WhatsApp.

If it gets its way, it will change social and the daily habit of 3.3 billion people worldwide.

“For 100 years, American public policy has insisted firms must compete if they want to succeed,” the FTC’s Daniel Matheson told the court. “Meta broke the deal.”

“They decided that competition was too hard, and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them.”

Forrester Research’s VP Mike Prolux was quoted in The Guardian saying:

“The ramifications of this trial coupled with TikTok’s future in limbo potentially puts the very core of the social media market at play.

“No longer would Meta be its centre of gravity. We haven’t seen anything like this since social media’s earliest days.

“We’d likely see a renaissance of social media startups looking to grab a piece of new social media world order.”

Not if Meta’s lawyers have anything to do with it.

The New York Times reported them denying the allegations, arguing Meta faces plenty of competition from TikTok and other social media platforms.

“This case is a grab bag of FTC theories at war with fact and at war with the law,” Meta’s lead lawyer Mark Hansen said.

“Facts are going to prove the FTC’s all wrong.”

Welcome to a flood of new subs over the weekend from leading French financial news service L’Agefi, The New York Times, The Trade Desk, NBC Universal, The Associated Press, The Professional Publishers Association in London (where I’ll be speaking in a few weeks), The Radio Times, also in London, The New Scientist, a flurry from The Australian Financial Review (someone’s sharing), The Institute for Nonprofit News in Minneapolis (where I am speaking in June), the government relations team at H/Advisors in Sydney, the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association the Attorney General’s office of the Canadian Government, Warner Bros, News UK, and Chile’s digital policy agency Criti, among others.

Now, it’s been a long time coming, Let’s get into the meat of Meta…