Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram from Facebook in 2018

Mark Zuckerberg in 2018 has reportedly considered turning Instagram into an independent company, as he grew increasingly worried that the app’s rising popularity was negatively impacting Facebook’s social network.

Zuckerberg is testifying for the second straight day in the US Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial. The document was shown during Zuckerberg's second day of testimony at the high-stakes trial, in which the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking to unwind Meta's acquisitions of prized assets Instagram and WhatsApp.

"I wonder if we should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company," Zuckerberg said in the 2018 memo.

Zuckerberg further cited in the memo, saying consolidation was likely to yield "strong business growth" but cautioning that it also could erode the value of flagship app Facebook's social network, with scant promise that the company would get to keep its full "family of apps" in the end.

Meta ultimately did not spin off Instagram, instead proceeding with the plan to integrate its apps the following year. But the fact that Zuckerberg even considered the idea is a stunning sign of how seriously he took the threat of precisely the type of antitrust trial proceeding now.

"As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway," he wrote then, noting the possibility that the "next Democratic president" could take action to break up tech companies.

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