Instagram Chief Says App Has Feared TikTok Threat for Years

A small portion of Instagram’s content material comes from customers participating with household and mates because the app focuses extra on video choices to compete with TikTok, the platform’s chief Adam Mosseri mentioned, searching for to fend off authorities claims that Meta Platforms monopolises social media.

Mosseri, a longtime Meta worker who grew to become the pinnacle of Instagram in 2018, testified Thursday that the social media market had modified “dramatically” since he first joined the corporate. Instagram is now locked in a fast-moving race towards TikTok and competing platforms, he argued, with all providing comparable options and vying for a similar core viewers of customers below age 30.

As Instagram has advanced to compete with TikTok with extra video leisure, so has the rationale individuals come to the platform, Mosseri instructed a federal courtroom in Washington throughout the fourth week of a US antitrust trial towards Meta. Just one in six posts to Instagram’s Tales characteristic at the moment are from individuals participating with their family and friends, he mentioned.

TikTok’s success has emerged as key to Meta’s protection within the high-profile antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Commerce Fee, which goals to interrupt up the father or mother firm and pressure it to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC’s case hinges on proving that Meta has obtained and held a monopoly in a narrowly outlined market referred to in courtroom as “private social networking providers.” That market consists primarily of merchandise targeted on sharing issues on-line with family and friends.

On Thursday, Meta’s legal professionals introduced an an inside Instagram doc from September 2019, which acknowledged in all capitals, “COMPETITION FROM TIKTOK IS A BIG CONCERN.” Instagram’s researchers had observed a slowdown in consumer engagement on the platform, and decided “conservatively” that 40% of the year-over-year decline in time spent on the platform was on account of TikTok’s rise, the doc confirmed. 

“For us, development is every part,” Mosseri mentioned in courtroom. “You are both rising, otherwise you’re slowly dying.”

In response to drops in engagement, Mosseri described the methods Meta executives sought to vary Instagram to higher compete with TikTok — together with spending billions of {dollars} to develop new options, increase its workforce, and advance its synthetic intelligence fashions. Instagram has since discovered the “most success” by “mixing” content material produced by family and friends with that of celebrities and public figures, Mosseri mentioned. 

Mosseri, who had simply returned from a visit to New York to attend the Met Gala, was composed in courtroom. His testimony repeatedly elicited laughs from the courtroom, together with from the FTC’s personal legal professionals. Throughout his look, he known as Meta’s buy of Instagram “among the finest acquisitions of all time.”

Earlier Thursday, the FTC unearthed Mosseri’s emails, movies he’d shared on Instagram and podcasts he’d joined over a number of years in a bid to indicate that the platform is constructed on relationships between family and friends. It additionally sought to reveal that the standard of Instagram declined on account of an absence of funding.

Mosseri, who’s held numerous roles at Meta — from product design to main Fb’s Newsfeed workforce to helming Instagram — supplied a extra conciliatory tone than different Meta staff who’ve testified. When the FTC’s lawyer introduced a 2018 e mail the place Mosseri had raised issues to a different govt about restricted sources for Instagram’s security work, which he known as “woefully understaffed,” the chief testified, “I do suppose our missions are at all times larger than our capacity to ship on them.” Mosseri added that he at all times desires extra sources for issues like security.

The FTC additionally introduced emails between Mosseri and Meta Chief Govt Officer Mark Zuckerberg in June of 2018. Clarifying remarks he’d made at Zuckerberg’s house the earlier weekend, Mosseri mentioned he did not suppose Instagram ought to abandon its emphasis on family and friends, and focus content material solely round influencers and pursuits. “I feel that is a mistake,” Mosseri wrote. 

Zuckerberg, in response, mentioned “Instagram undoubtedly must proceed doing mates” and can “at all times have to concentrate on mates” along with influencers. 

© 2025 Bloomberg LP

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