The landmark case, brought by the Federal Trade Commission, could see Meta forced to divest itself of the two apps, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyouts.
At the heart of the antitrust battle is the question of whether the crucial ingredient that undergirds Meta's success is its ability to make connections between friends or family across its apps.
Meta counters that its rivals are YouTube and TikTok and that it competes furiously in a much wider and ever-changing market to capture the eyeballs and attention of the world's users.
Much of the testimony has been devoted to government lawyers building their case that Facebook and its family of apps constitute a market that is distinct from TikTok and YouTube, apps where personal connections have very little impact on usage.
As a sign of the monopoly, the government also points to widespread reports of customer dissatisfaction with Meta products but continued success and growth of its apps.
On the government’s last day of calling its witnesses, the head of Facebook, Tom Alison told the court the company is in an “upheaval,“ facing generational changes in online habits as young users prefer TikTok-style short video content over sharing pictures and text.
But the government believes that Facebook's hold on friends and family shields its business from swings in the market and that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014 respectively, to remove potential threats to its dominance.
Testimony in the past weeks has included revelations by Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram, that he felt that Zuckerberg had undermined the success of his photo-sharing app in favor of Facebook once he was bought out.
Meta on Thursday began calling its own list of witnesses, beginning with executives from Snap.
“Regardless, we will present our case to show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram competes with TikTok (and YouTube and X and many other apps),“ Meta added.
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