Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg found himself testifying in a Washington D.C. federal courtroom on April 14, marking the start of a major antitrust trial brought by the Federal Trade Commission.
The lawsuit, which targets Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, seeks potentially to dismantle parts of the $1.4 trillion company. The trial commenced only after Zuckerberg’s personal, last-minute attempts to settle the case in late March 2025 failed; his offers starting at $450 million—described by then-FTC Chair Lina Khan as “delusional”—fell dramatically short of the agency’s multi-billion dollar demands.
This legal confrontation unfolds alongside separate, damaging allegations from a former employee who told a Senate panel just days earlier that Meta built censorship tools for China and that Zuckerberg misled Congress about these activities. Adding another layer, Meta appointed former high-ranking Trump administration advisor Dina Powell McCormick and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison to its board, effective April 15 just as the trial got underway.
FTC Challenges Foundational Acquisitions
The FTC’s case, initially filed back in December 2020, argues that Meta unlawfully maintained a monopoly in “personal social networking” by buying potential competitors.
Lead FTC attorney Daniel Matheson argued Meta sought to ‘erect a moat’ around its dominance, claiming Zuckerberg followed a principle that ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.
The agency presented internal communications, including a 2012 email where Zuckerberg discussed the Instagram purchase potentially aiming to “neutralize a potential competitor” and 2013 documents expressing concern over WhatsApp’s threat to Facebook’s engagement.
The FTC is ultimately asking the court to force Meta to divest both Instagram (acquired 2012) and WhatsApp (acquired 2014). Adding context to Meta’s long-standing awareness of these risks, internal Meta documents cited in court suggest the company discussed selling Instagram back in 2018 due to regulatory concerns.
A separate 2018 email revealed during the trial showed Zuckerberg acknowledging a “non-trivial chance” of being forced to divest the apps within 5-10 years, even musing that “most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up,” though he later testified he wasn’t sure which corporate histories he meant.
Whistleblower Alleges China Censorship Collaboration
Meta’s defense portrays a vastly different picture of a highly competitive market, arguing that users have been the “big winners” from Meta’s investments and questioning the monopoly claim given the services are free.
Zuckerberg testified that Facebook itself has evolved, becoming “more of a broad discovery-entertainment space,” with the “friend’ part has gone down quite a bit…” Meta officially stated that its platforms compete vigorously with “Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”
Yet, this defense faces scrutiny in light of testimony delivered on April 9 before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Sen. Josh Hawley. Former Facebook public policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams accused Zuckerberg of personally overseeing the development of specialized censorship tools for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“I witnessed Meta work hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics,” she stated, detailing tools like “virality counters” triggering reviews at 10,000 views and an “Orwellian censor” role titled “chief editor” with powers including regional service shutdowns, like in Xinjiang, or during sensitive anniversaries like Tiananmen Square.
She asserted internal security staff documented warnings about the project potentially exposing American user data to Chinese state surveillance, recounting engineers lamenting, “‘My red line as a security engineer is not to be comfortable with this, but my red line is not Mark Zuckerberg’s red line.'” When asked if Zuckerberg had such a line regarding these risks, she replied, “I did not.”
Wynn-Williams further alleged these tools were tested with CCP feedback and activated not just for mainland China but also in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She claimed Meta deleted the account of US-based dissident Guo Wengui in 2017 at Beijing’s behest and that Zuckerberg subsequently gave inaccurate testimony to Congress in 2018 by denying cooperation on censorship.
“When Beijing demanded that Facebook delete the account of a prominent Chinese dissident living on American soil, they did it, and then lied to Congress when asked about the incident in a Senate hearing,” Wynn-Williams alleged.
Her testimony also raised concerns about infrastructure like the proposed Pacific Light Cable Network and claimed Meta shared its open-source Llama AI model in ways that benefited Chinese competitor DeepSeek – a company whose efficient AI models, like DeepSeek R1, reportedly caused internal “panic” at Meta earlier in 2025, with one employee writing on the platform Blind, “Engineers are moving frantically to dissect DeepSeek and copy anything and everything we can from it.” Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels called the testimony “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.” Following the hearing, Senator Hawley formally requested Zuckerberg appear before the panel.
Board Moves and Political Calculations
The trial and whistleblower hearing occurred amid visible political strategy adjustments by Meta. The appointment of Dina Powell McCormick and Patrick Collison to the board followed earlier reports of Zuckerberg’s White House lobbying visits and occurred after Meta dismantled its US third-party fact-checking program in January 2025, a move praised by President Trump.
That same month, Meta also appointed UFC CEO and Trump advocate Dana White to its board, suggesting a pattern of attempting to bolster connections with the administration. These adjustments happened as Meta also lobbied against EU digital rules, adopting language similar to a February White House memorandum describing some EU fines as “overseas extortion.”
Navigating a Complex Legal and Competitive Field
The legal and political challenges compound existing internal pressures. Zuckerberg had previously warned employees in a leaked meeting about the need to balance core products with future platforms, stating, “If we can’t build Facebook and the next platform at the same time, then eventually game over.”
The company also underwent restructuring since February, merging Facebook and Messenger teams and conducting performance-based layoffs.
The FTC trial itself is proceeding under Judge James Boasberg, who previously dismissed the FTC’s initial complaint in June 2021 as “legally insufficient” before allowing an amended version to proceed in January 2022, indicating a potentially high bar for the agency to clear.
Just before the trial started, lawyers for both sides told the judge they were unaware of any active settlement talks. The trial is expected to last several weeks, potentially extending into the summer, with possible testimony from figures like Sheryl Sandberg and the co-founders of Instagram and WhatsApp.
