About a year before the Federal Trade Commission first opened its antitrust investigation into Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, CEO Mark Zuckerberg internally suggested “the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company.”

The Meta chief executive testified in a landmark antitrust trial that it was business as usual when he bought rival apps. He denied he was trying to snuff out competitors.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of social media company Meta Platforms (META), admitted in a U.S. antitrust trial that he bought Instagram because its