Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, testified in a federal antitrust trial that Meta, formerly Facebook, underinvested in Instagram following its acquisition in 2012. Systrom claimed that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, feared Instagram’s success and deliberately limited its growth. This testimony supports the government’s argument that Meta employed a “buy-or-bury” strategy to eliminate competition.
Systrom left Meta in 2018, citing insufficient investment by Zuckerberg. Despite Instagram’s rapid growth to one billion users—about 40% of Facebook’s size—it had only 1,000 employees compared to Facebook’s 35,000. Systrom argued that Instagram should have been much larger given its revenue generation and growth rate. Zuckerberg, in contrast, testified last week that Meta heavily invested in Instagram post-acquisition.
— new from The New York Times