As Facebook’s popularity surged, Zuckerberg began building a social media empire, acquiring some of the most popular startups in the industry. This included purchasing Instagram

In an internal email surfaced as part of the Meta antitrust trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg fretted about the potential that the company’s Instagram acquisition may cannibalize Facebook. Were that to happen,

Systrom testified that Instagram had the potential to thrive independently and did not require Meta’s infrastructure or resources to scale.