Internal Meta documents revealed during the FTC’s antitrust trial aiming to break up the social media giant exposed an alarming warning from an executive about the prevalence of “fake” activity on Instagram.
The New York Post reports that during the FTC’s high-stakes trial against Meta, the agency presented internal documents surfaced this week that shed light on the social media giant’s struggle with “fake” activity on Instagram. The disclosure came in the form of an October 2018 email exchange between Instagram’s current head, Adam Mosseri, and an unnamed executive who raised serious concerns about the platform’s integrity efforts.
The executive, whose identity remains redacted in court papers, warned Mosseri that Instagram had “mis-prioritized and under-funded our integrity efforts” in its relentless pursuit of growth. In a memo attached to the email, the executive cited estimates suggesting that “fake engagement could be in range of 40 percent,” a staggering figure that highlights the scale of the problem.
Urging Mosseri to allocate more resources to Meta’s “well-being” team, the executive emphasized that a “loss of public trust is the greatest threat we have” and that leaving the issue unchecked would be “crushing for the company.” The executive proposed several immediate steps to enhance Instagram’s integrity, including the implementation of “reCAPTCHA” tools to combat bots, mandatory phone number verification for accounts, and requiring users to update to the latest version of the app.
Mosseri, who had assumed the role of Instagram’s head just weeks before the email exchange, acknowledged the importance of addressing fake accounts and engagement. He wrote, “I think what you’re saying at the end of the day is you think we should grow [well-being] more than we plan to, which I think is a reasonable position.”
A Meta spokesperson responded to Breitbart News about the latest updates in the case, stating, “Out-of-context and years-old documents about acquisitions that were reviewed by the FTC more than a decade ago will not obscure the realities of the competition we face or overcome the FTC’s weak case.”
The email exchange is just one piece of a trove of internal Meta documents that have emerged during the FTC trial, which accuses Meta of employing a “buy or bury” strategy by acquiring potential competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp before they could threaten its alleged social media monopoly. The FTC is seeking to compel Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp in an effort to restore competition in the market, a move that would be devastating to the company’s bottom line.
Earlier in the trial, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified that he felt CEO Mark Zuckerberg treated the app’s success as a “threat” to Facebook following its $1 billion acquisition in 2012. Systrom, who resigned in 2018, claimed that crucial resources were withheld from Instagram despite his insistence, citing one instance where the app received no additional headcount to improve its data privacy practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Mosseri, who also took the stand last week, acknowledged the frustration felt by Instagram’s leadership regarding some of Zuckerberg’s decisions but maintained that both companies “benefited greatly” from the acquisition.
The outcome of the case is expected to hinge on whether Judge James Boasberg accepts the FTC’s argument that Meta holds an illegal monopoly over a narrow market for “friends-and-family”-based social apps, with Snapchat as its sole significant competitor. Meta counters this definition, asserting that it faces fierce competition from platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
Read more at the New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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