A small portion of Instagram’s content comes from users engaging with family and friends as the app focuses more on video offerings to compete with TikTok, the platform’s chief Adam Mosseri said, seeking to fend off government claims that Meta Platforms monopolises social media.
Mosseri, a longtime Meta employee who became the head of Instagram in 2018, testified Thursday that the social media market had changed “dramatically” since he first joined the company. Instagram is now locked in a fast-moving race against TikTok and competing platforms, he argued, with all offering similar features and vying for the same core audience of users under age 30.
As Instagram has evolved to compete with TikTok with more video entertainment, so has the reason people come to the platform, Mosseri told a federal court in Washington during the fourth week of a US antitrust trial against Meta. Only one in six posts to Instagram’s Stories feature are now from people engaging with their friends and family, he said.
TikTok’s success has emerged as key to Meta’s defense in the high-profile antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission, which aims to break up the parent company and force it to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC’s case hinges on proving that Meta has obtained and held a monopoly in a narrowly defined market referred to in court as “personal social networking services.” That market consists primarily of products focused on sharing things online with friends and family.
On Thursday, Meta’s lawyers presented an an internal Instagram document from September 2019, which stated in all capitals, “COMPETITION FROM TIKTOK IS A BIG CONCERN.” Instagram’s researchers had noticed a slowdown in user engagement on the platform, and determined “conservatively” that 40% of the year-over-year decline in time spent on the platform was due to TikTok’s rise, the document showed.
“For us, growth is everything,” Mosseri said in court. “You’re either growing, or you’re slowly dying.”
In response to drops in engagement, Mosseri described the ways Meta executives sought to change Instagram to better compete with TikTok — including spending billions of dollars to develop new features, expand its workforce, and advance its artificial intelligence models. Instagram has since found the “most success” by “blending” content produced by friends and family with that of celebrities and public figures, Mosseri said.
Mosseri, who had just returned from a trip to New York to attend the Met Gala, was composed in court. His testimony repeatedly elicited laughs from the courtroom, including from the FTC’s own lawyers. During his appearance, he called Meta’s purchase of Instagram “one of the best acquisitions of all time.”
Earlier Thursday, the FTC unearthed Mosseri’s emails, videos he’d shared on Instagram and podcasts he’d joined over several years in a bid to show that the platform is built on relationships between friends and family. It also sought to demonstrate that the quality of Instagram declined due to a lack of investment.
Mosseri, who’s held various roles at Meta — from product design to leading Facebook’s Newsfeed team to helming Instagram — offered a more conciliatory tone than other Meta employees who have testified. When the FTC’s lawyer presented a 2018 email where Mosseri had raised concerns to another executive about limited resources for Instagram’s safety work, which he called “woefully understaffed,” the executive testified, “I do think our missions are always greater than our ability to deliver on them.” Mosseri added that he always wants more resources for things like safety.
The FTC also presented emails between Mosseri and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg in June of 2018. Clarifying remarks he’d made at Zuckerberg’s home the previous weekend, Mosseri said he didn’t think Instagram should abandon its emphasis on friends and family, and focus content only around influencers and interests. “I think that’s a mistake,” Mosseri wrote.
Zuckerberg, in response, said “Instagram definitely needs to continue doing friends” and will “always need to focus on friends” in addition to influencers.
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