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Key Takeaways
Meta went to court Monday against the Federal Trade Commission in a landmark antitrust case.

If the trial ends in the FTC’s favor, Meta could be forced to sells apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly sought help from the Trump administration in resolving the case.

Meta (META) went to court Monday against the Federal Trade Commission in a landmark antitrust case that could force the social media titan to sell off Instagram or WhatsApp.

The FTC’s complaint, originally filed in 2021, alleges Meta engaged in an “illegal buy-or-bury scheme to maintain its dominance” and “acquired innovative competitors with popular mobile features that succeeded where Facebook’s own offerings fell flat or fell apart.”

If the trial ends in the FTC’s favor, Meta could be forced to break up its social media holdings by selling off apps such as Instagram or the social messaging platform WhatsApp.

Meta CEO Zuckerberg Seeks Trump Administration’s Help To Resolve Case
The trial comes a couple weeks after Zuckerberg reportedly visited the White House to seek President Donald Trump’s help to resolve the FTC case, according to reporting from the New York Times.

The Meta CEO has also looked to the administration for help in fighting against looming fines from the European Commission, according to reports.

In a statement over the weekend, Meta Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said, “it’s absurd that the FTC is trying to break up a great American company at the same time the Administration is trying to save Chinese-owned TikTok.”

Shares of Meta slid about 2% in recent trading Monday. The stock is down 9% so far in 2025.

Mark Zuckerberg once considered deleting all your Facebook friends

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. Meta Platforms Inc. debuted its first pair of augmented reality glasses, devices that show a combined view of the digital and physical worlds, a key step in Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of one day offering a hands-free alternative to the smartphone. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Image Credits:David Paul Morris/Bloomberg / Getty Images)More
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered deleting everyone’s Facebook friends in an effort to boost the social network’s cultural relevance. This “potentially crazy idea,” as the exec called it at the time, was revealed on Monday as a part of the evidence introduced during the first day of the U.S. government’s antitrust trial against Meta.

In one message to Meta employees in 2022, Zuckerberg proposed the strategy of “wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again” as a possible solution to Facebook’s declining significance in the social networking space. The idea was that forcing everyone to re-create their friend graphs could encourage users to reconnect with the social network as they rebuild their social connections.

Others at Meta, including the head of Facebook, Tom Alison, pushed back on the plan, and ultimately, the strategy was never implemented.

However, the evidence presented in the trial revealed that Zuckerberg had considered other strategies to maintain his company’s relevance, including shifting Facebook from a friends-based model to a follower-based model. That also never came to be.

In recent weeks, Facebook has focused again on connecting friends, having revamped its Friends tab in an effort to return to an “OG Facebook.” The new tab centralizes friend requests and only friends’ content, including their posts, reels, stories, and birthdays.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities to make [Facebook] way more culturally influential than it is today,” Zuckerberg told investors during Meta’s Q4 2024 earnings call about his key goals for the year ahead. “I think some of this will kind of get back to how Facebook was originally used back in the day.”