Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits that he bought Instagram because it had a “better” camera than the one the company was trying to build with Facebook.

Zuckerberg made the key admission during his testimony on Monday that the U.S. government’s high-stakes antitrust case against Meta which could force the CEO to sell off Instagram.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s landmark trial against Meta began on Monday in Washington, D.C. The consumer protection agency says Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition before those platforms could grow into serious rivals — establishing what it claims is an illegal monopoly in the social media landscape.

Zuckerberg’s admission that he wanted to buy Instagram because of its camera technology, not because of its social network came during his second day testifying at the high-stakes trial.

Asked by an attorney for the FTC whether he thought fast-growing Instagram posed a threat to Meta, then known as Facebook, Zuckerberg says he believed Instagram had a better camera than what his company was building.

“We were doing a build vs. buy analysis” while building a camera app, Zuckerberg says, according to reporting by Reuters. “I thought that Instagram was better at that, so I thought it was better to buy them.”

According to the report by Reuters, Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment appears to bolster allegations by the FTC that Meta had used a “buy or bury” strategy to snap up potential rivals, keep smaller competitors at bay, and maintain an illegal monopoly.

During the anti-trust trial, the FTC’s lawyers presented a 2012 email that Zuckerberg had written to Sheryl Sandberg, who was former COO of Facebook, in which he wrote: “Instagram is growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion.”

When asked about this email correspondence by the FTC’s lawyers, Zuckerberg replies: “Building a new app is hard.”

Lawyers for the FTC asked Zuckerberg if Meta could have built its own app to compete with Instagram instead of buying the competitor.

“I’m sure we could have built an app,” Zuckerberg says. “Whether it would have succeeded or not I think is a matter of speculation.”

The trial is expected to continue for the next two months. The FTC will try to prove that Meta used its dominance to squash potential threats instead of competing fairly.

Meta is expected to argue that it helped turn Instagram and WhatsApp into global platforms used by billions of people, all while continuing to face strong competition.

If the FTC wins the pivotal case it could force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.