Even more, Meta argued that the FTC did disappoint proof that users sharing friends-and-family material were revealed more advertisements. Meta kept in mind that it “does not profit by showing more ads to users who do not click on them,” It just reveals more advertisements to users who click advertisements.

Meta likewise firmly insisted that there’s “nothing but speculation” revealing that Instagram or WhatsApp would have been much better off or become competitors had Meta not obtained them.

The business declared that without Meta’s resources, Instagram might have passed away off. Meta kept in mind that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom affirmed that his app was “quite damaged and duct-taped” together, making it “vulnerable to spam” before Meta purchased it.

Instead of enshittification, what Meta did to Instagram might be thought about “a consumer-welfare bonanza,” Meta argued, while dismissing “smoking gun” e-mails from Mark Zuckerberg talking about purchasing Instagram to bury it as “legally irrelevant.”

Dismissing these as “a few dated emails,” Meta argued that “efforts to litigate Mr. Zuckerberg’s state of mind before the acquisition in 2012 are pointless.”

“What matters is what Meta did,” Meta argued, which was pump Instagram with resources that enabled it “to ‘thrive’—adding many new features, attracting hundreds of millions and then billions of users, and monetizing with great success.”

When it comes to WhatsApp, Meta argued that no one believes WhatsApp had any objective to pivot to social networks when the creators affirmed that their objective was to never ever include social functions, choosing to provide an easy, tidy messaging app. And Meta contested any claim that it feared Google may purchase WhatsApp as the basis for developing a Facebook competitor, arguing that “the sole Meta witness to (supposedly) learn of Google’s acquisition efforts testified that he did not have that worry.”