The most meaningful moment of the American antitrust process against Meta so far came halfway through more than 10 hours of witness from Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of the company.
On the witness bank last week, Mr. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook and later his company Meta Heta, asked by government lawyers to watch a video of an interview of an interview that he gave at a technical conference more than ten years ago. With his eyebrows frowned and eyes, the 40-year-old technical billionaire saw his 28-year-old describing himself how the world of 2012 “really underestimated” his company.
At the time, smartphones were a budding computer platform instead of the dominant. Facebook was still mainly used on desktop computers and Mr. Zuckerberg's social network ran the risk of losing users at a flurry of startups.
The older Mr. Zuckerberg occasionally shivered when he saw his younger himself discussing on video, discussing some of his early competitive care, such as the potential for Dropbox, a company for sharing files, to become a rival in sharing photos. In retrospect, he said in the stands, it was “pretty ridiculous” to think that Dropbox would compete with Facebook.
In short, it was a reminder of a completely different era of social apps, Silicon Valley Hubris and Ivy League-educated entrepreneurs, who put back the antitrust process of Meta in a courtroom in the US district court for the Columbia district. It is about the historical matter, which could have happened if Mr. Zuckerberg had never concluded two important deals, Instagram had bought in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and whether he destroyed the competition with the acquisitions.
Sitting in the courtroom of right James E. Boasberg was a witness for the first two weeks as the introduction of a Time Warp. Managers who have long left Meta, including Sheryl Sandberg, the former second-in-command of Mr. Zuckerberg, and Kevin Systrom, a founder of Instagram-being the most important witnesses. Lawyers have listed e -mails that date more than a decade.
To show that Meta was paranoid about competition, his public prosecutors also walked through a graveyard of Dead Apps that at the time Mr. Zuckerberg and his lieutenants worry.
At a certain point, lawyers spent hours discussing Path, a personal social network that went Kaput in 2018. Other apps that came during the process are orkut, a social network that was popular in South America (now dead); Evernote, a note app (changed leaders, was then sold); And Google Plus, Google is assumed again to Facebook (very, very dead).
The testimony has underlined the steep challenge of the government to bring a case, Federal Trade Commission v. Meta platforms, against a fast-moving modern tech giant. By the time that the five-year-old lawsuit was tried last week, Silicon Valley had continued to fight on social networks for fighting for artificial intelligence, quantum computing and cars without director so much that it was sometimes difficult to relate to what was discussed in court.
Social media have also evolved. During the process, government lawyers tried to define the social network market of Meta as one that is about connecting with friends and family. That is because more than ten years ago Facebook had a clear advantage with his' friends' graph ', which is the group of friends, family and personal connections with which a user is linked to the social network. That graph made it harder for users to pack and easily go somewhere else.
But a decade is a long time in internet years, and somewhere along the way, social media became less about social and more about media. People now post fewer status updates and photos. Scrolling by apps is less about sharing with friends and more about having strangers entertained.
That evolution was obvious in the Washington's courtroom when members of the gallery occasionally chuckled for how different things used to be. A lawyer who popped up daily to observe the trial laughed aloud when Mrs. Sandberg witnessed and politely pushed back to a reference to Cambridge Analytica, a British electoral profile company that ticked Facebook data without the permission of users before the Presidential Analytica -Mrs. Sandberg, who said the Cambridge was in the Cambridge Losts in the Cambridge Losts in the Cambridge vostyst's vosties' vosty, 'vosties' vosties' vosties' vosties' vast,' vosties' vosties' vosties' vosties' vosties' vosties' vosties' vast, 'vosties' vast,' vosties. facts, appeared briefly distracted by the eruption.
The test was such a throwback that an excessive amount of time was also spent explaining why Instagram photo filters were seen at the time as the second arrival of product innovation.
Some witnesses also had to explain to Right Boasberg that Dave Morin, the founder of Path; Drew Houston, a founder of Dropbox; And Ben Silbermann, a founder of Pinterest, were hotshot executives who at home on social media at the beginning of 2010.
At another point, Mr. remembered. Zuckerberg the Court of Court of watching video on a smartphone in 2018 just started to start. Meta had ignored the trend at his own risk, he said, with Tiktok and YouTube powerhouses. Tiktok could have cost Meta $ 3 billion to $ 6 billion in income for a few years if it did not act, according to the internal modeling of the company at that time.
“We really felt the impact,” said Mr. Zuckerberg.
Lawyers also asked questions about a seven -year beef between Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr Systrom, as well as a founder of WhatsApp between Mr Zuckerberg and Jan Koum. Mr. Zuckerberg praised Mr Systrom, but testified that working with him had his 'peculiarities'.
Mr Zuckerberg also noticed how difficult it was for him to manage Mr Koum and Brian Acton, another founder of WhatsApp, because of their resistance to feedback on product development.
“It's hard to really express the contempt they had for other social functions in other social apps,” said Mr. Zuckerberg. The courtroom moved.
In testimony on Tuesday, Mr Systrom did not praise Mr. Zuckerberg. Instead, he said that Meta had starved Instagram of resources, and he characterized Mr.'s actions. Zuckerberg as partly arising from what looked like jealousy.
“He felt a lot of emotion that you were better about, which means that Instagram or Facebook,” said Mr Systrom. “And I think real human emotional things were going on.”
While managers described the changes in social media during the process, many of their memories afterwards seemed almost strange – that is, if they could remember their thinking process. Many witnesses said they could remember their thinking no more than ten years ago.
On Monday, Neeraj Arora, an investor of risk capital who worked at Google more than 15 years ago, was asked for a memo from 2010 that he had written to Google executives to pitch them when buying WhatsApp to “increase our mobile social initiatives.”
It was “so many years ago, it's hard for me to remember,” said Mr. Arora.
Even Mr. Systrom was silent during the journey through the memory. When asked on Tuesday whether Spam's problem had contributed to the decline of MySpace, an early social network, he stopped to renew his memory.
“I haven't thought about that company for a long time,” he said.
