How big is too big?
Have you been to one of those parties where people seem to be having a really good time? The alcohol’s flowing like a fountain, people are moving, grooving and shaking & the speakers play music so loud that it makes the liquid in the red cups vibrate and ripple. And the party goes on until the grumpy, old-school and curmudgeonly next-door neighbour knocks on the door pointedly to curtly remark that the party is over.
Someone’s been knocking on Mark Zuckerberg’s door. It’s the US government. And it’s telling him that it’s time he breaks up his party.
You might have seen Zuck 2.0 in recent times. Maybe, he was fed up with being seen as the nerd with the “weird” hairstyle and the “lifeless” eyes. So, he grew his hair longer until it was curly, changed his dress code a bit and went on a couple of podcasts, including Joseph Rogan’s and Theo Von’s. Wow, the Zuck is one of us. He’s so relatable.
Until we’re jolted by the fact that he owns Meta, an entity that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and more. The folks in the US government aren’t too happy about that. Remember when Senator Bernard Sanders proposed splitting Zuck’s tech empire during the COVID-19 pandemic? Some might have smirked at that idea. As if that’s ever going to happen. Some folks might have considered that to be government overreach. But, that idea has come back and with teeth.
In April 2025, there’s a back-and-forth going on. The Zuck’s on one side. And challenging him at the tender age of 111 is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)- a government body that aims to enforce antitrust and consumer protection laws. The FTC doesn’t seem to like that Mark took the Monopoly board game too seriously and wants him to rein it in. Instagram and WhatsApp are installed on more than hundreds of devices across the world and seem to generate a massive portion of Meta’s revenue. But, these two beloved apps might be the very reason Meta gets broken up.
Meta acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014 and Instagram for about a billion dollars. Sean Parker did once ask, “You know what’s cooler than a million dollars?”, so why not?
The FTC alleges what Meta did was a strategy to kill the competition and continue to maintain a foothold in the social media realm. Something’s a threat? Kill it or make it your own. It’s said that an internal email outlines that the Zuck thought that buying Insta was motivated by a desire to neutralize a potential competitor and that Facebook’s camera app wasn’t able to keep up. Boom! That seemed to be the smoking gun of a monopoly in action.
The FTC is said to see this kind of behaviour as illegal under US federal antitrust laws, but then again, why else would a company acquire another company? Zuck was said to have remarked that the acquisition was about building a better product for users, which is why a build versus buy analysis was being done.
Interestingly, there was a time when Mark prognosticated about making Instagram and WhatsApp their own companies, but those just might be musings.
You might have seen how social media has changed in the last 10 or 15 or even 20 years. Before, it was about connecting with friends and playing Farmville. Now, it’s become more video-focused with memes, Reels, influencers and more. That’s where the attention economy is thriving and where the advertising money is flowing.
Content has not really been about what your friends like, there’s a strong focus for Meta’s companies to use algorithms to curate what they think might be your interests. Messaging has also been thriving.
But, maybe, the FTC isn’t accusing Meta of controlling the entire Internet, just those apps that help people stay in touch with those they want to be connected with. That’s where Meta might still have an ironclad grip. Think Thanos holding on to Vision as he tries to extract the Mind Stone.
And let’s not forget TikTok is still in the picture in the US… for now. Apple’s iMessage is, also, being seen as a form of competition. Is anyone doing SMS anymore?
Mark might have realized that this goes beyond just a mere warning and that the FTC might be serious about this. So, it was suggested that he might have offered $450 million to settle the whole thing. You better lawyer up, a**hole, the FTC is not coming for $450 million, it’s coming for everything.
The rules might be optional if you’re rich enough. Even a billion dollars may have been offered. Hey, if it’s enough to buy Instagram, it should be enough to appease the FTC gods, right? Nope. It’s said that the FTC may be demanding $30 billion. Talk about a shakedown. Would the FTC keep that $30 billion or would they send it to US citizens? Is this a selfless move?
It may be why Mark may be cozying up to the Donald attending his second inauguration, donating money to his causes, adding Trump allies to Meta’s Board – welcome, UFC king Dana White, tell us your thoughts on content moderation and monopoly mitigation – and calling him a badass with reference to the assassination attempt. Interestingly, there was a point when #47 was banned from Meta’s platforms after the whole January 6 debacle.
If Meta loses this, it might be forced to break itself apart. AT&T was said to have broken up in the US a couple of decades ago. Microsoft had an antitrust trial, too. Maybe, that divestiture might mean more fragmentation or confusion. This could get real messy.
But, if Meta wins, it’s a win for BigTech to let them know that you can buy all your competitors if you need to, but if the FTC wins, it might send a message that unchecked tech consolidation isn’t cool anymore. Or maybe it never was.
Maybe, the FTC isn’t doing this for ideological reasons. Maybe, they want to announce loud and clear that the game is rigged and others can’t win if the game is rigged. By design, the board might have been tilted in Meta’s favour to some extent.
Is it wrong if Meta has a billion people user base, integrates elements from upstarts and then, makes a billion-dollar offer to buy that upstart? If the upstart says no, no problem, Meta will just outspend, out-execute and outlast, making even the existence of the upstart untenable. It’s best to just give in and submit. There’s no Chuck Rhoades to save you, maybe. Does innovation include the elimination of threats: two shots to the chest and one to the head?
Maybe, building a monopoly is not about being the best, it’s about making sure no one else gets to try. Think Chatur slipping nudie magazines to fellow classmates one day before the exam so that they lose concentration. Drain the oxygen from the room.
And possibly, trends like that change the way aspiring startup founders think: not about how to build the best product or create a legacy that outlives the founders, but what the timeline is to get acquired. The whole endgame and purpose might change. That’s a huge psychological shift. “Hopefully, they buy us before they copy us or execute us”. They buy you or they bury you. Why aspire to build a better social media platform in 2025 and beyond when Meta controls messaging on 3 of the biggest social media platforms in the world? Why would you want to build something new when you know the market leader might hijack your best ideas and distribute them in a better, cheaper and faster manner? It’s foolishness, right? Unless you have a lot of capital backing you all of a sudden.
Of course, Meta might say it bought Insta and WhatsApp to make them better or create better products. That sounds great. But, a pre-emptive strike might reflect the true justification of acquisition. AYS doesn’t want Rocket Singh Sales to become a better company, it just wants to control the routes to scale and eliminate competition. This might not be family time, it just might serve Meta’s data and ad empire: integrating user data across platforms, creating some more cross-integration, getting a bigger sample size to track user behaviour and more. Integration or entrenchment? Free market or fiefdom?
Now, Meta owns the distribution. Take that, world. With app fatigue setting in, it’s already hard to acquire users and retain them.
If you were one of the earlier users of Insta, you might have used it to share sweet and wholesome pictures. Cut to 2025 and it’s cluttered with mindless Reels and ads. A counterargument might be that in the event that Instagram hadn’t been acquired by Meta, would it have, also, gone the ad and Reels route to survive? To compete in the TikTok era? Would the pure-wholesome-pictures model have killed Instagram long before if it stayed that way?
On the other hand, doesn’t the US pride itself on a corn-fed, free-range, organically-grown, competitive, and risk-taking capitalistic model? Did Instagram have enough revenue to sustain? Monetization? Was WhatsApp burning a lot of money handling an SMS level of traffic without a robust monetization model? $19 billion may have been a moonshot to pay for a company like that, which had promise and traction, for sure, but may not have had everything in place. So, Meta took the risk and reaped the benefits of making it a viable business. If Instagram failed afterwards, would the FTC compensate Meta for the amount of money it put in? Then, why only his wins?
If Instagram had failed, the Zuck would have been crucified as a reckless entrepreneur. But, he succeeded, so he’s being accused of playing dirty. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Without Meta, would Instagram be able to handle a billion users? Could WhatsApp have secured that level of end-to-end encryption? Does a real operator wait for competition to thrive and suck the oxygen out of the room? Or would they plan, pivot or acquire? Should that be punished or respected?
And is it good if startups keep in mind a path to exit? How often would startups get early-stage capital if it didn’t mention an exit strategy? Would a VC take the risk of investing in building a better feature if a key outcome of strategic acquisition is now deemed to be legally toxic? And didn’t the FTC approve these acquisitions? Is it going back on its approval and back-pedalling? Isn’t there double jeopardy or something? Meta wasn’t furtive about acquiring these companies. It was public and it was scrutinized. That’s not regulation, it’s revisionist history, right? Quentin Tarantino would be proud.
What has the outcome been? Have consumers got more feature-rich platforms as a result of these acquisitions? Is the argument that theoretical competitors might have emerged? That’s not even a standard, at best, it might be guesswork to break up a trillion-dollar company based on what could have happened in a parallel universe. “Sure, you should move fast and break things, but don’t move too fast and please don’t win too decisively, it makes us sad. Also, you should be punished if you see the future more clearly than your competitors”.
And maybe, Instagram or WhatsApp wanted this. They wanted the money. They wanted Meta’s global distribution or infrastructure. Are we acting like they’re the victim when they might not be? There’s a graveyard of startups, products and features out there that may have been real good and impactful and beneficial, but failed to execute as well as they should have or gain visibility.
And if the FTC directive goes through, what will WhatsApp and Instagram look like? The ad platform? The safety and moderation team? The infrastructure? The security protocols? What will users see every time they open Instagram or WhatsApp? Are there back-ends in place?
Will Instagram 2.0 and WhatsApp 2.0 be weakened, chaotic and overextended? Would the apps say “Sorry, under construction”? Users won’t care. Creators won’t care. Ad dollars would leave a sinking ship. They’ll walk out and spend more time on TikTok. Thank you, China.
Interestingly, if Instagram and WhatsApp rebuild and thrive as standalone companies, it might validate the idea that children can eventually outperform parents. Don’t parents want that anyway? That’s a cute and nice cultural reset for VCs.
So, it’s Jenga with the software that billions have adopted. And the tower might be close to collapsing. It might be a sweet way to disarm American tech, though, and make TikTok the new cultural hotspot for the Gen-Z and millennial identity. Or the US can ban that, too and YouTube can be the top social media entity. Then, when YouTube gets big too, the US can ban that as well and take down Google in the process.
Would the US government want to own WhatsApp and Instagram? Eminent domain, but for startups?
Would anyone want to build the next WhatsApp if there’s a possibility that it might one day be confiscated by the government because it got too big?
Sometimes, innovation can get regulated. Other times, it might get neutered or even euthanized. Bye bye, India’s Instagram entrepreneurs.
All of it might make you think: are you cool with having one company having so much influence on how people connect or communicate or share? Meta might see its size as a strength. It gets to compete with China and build better products, serve more people and invest in future tech. The FTC thinks its magnitude, on the other hand, has crushed competition, reduced choices people could make and stifled competition.
It’s a real dilemma. Both arguments could be true. Which makes it complicated to determine the right path.
The Zuck was said to have remarked that in a lot of ways, Meta – then called Facebook – is more like a government than a traditional company. That might have irked the FTC.
What does the next digital public square look like?
