At Meta Trial, Instagram Co-Founder Says Startup Was Denied Resources

Kevin Systrom, a co-founder of Instagram, testified on Tuesday in a landmark federal antitrust trial that his start-up was starved of resources after Meta bought it because Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, was afraid of the success of the photo-sharing app.

“Mark was not investing in Instagram because he believed we were a threat to their growth,” Mr. Systrom said.

Mr. Systrom’s more than six hours of testimony was among the most pointed for the government’s case that Meta had purchased Instagram in 2012 as part of a “buy-or-bury strategy” to illegally cement its social media monopoly by killing off its rivals. The Instagram co-founder made millions when Mr. Zuckerberg bought his company, but Mr. Systrom sharply contradicted Meta’s defense during hours on the stand in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg testified that the social media giant, formerly known as Facebook, used its deep pockets to invest in Instagram after its purchase.

Mr. Systrom countered on Tuesday that he left Meta in 2018 because of Mr. Zuckerberg’s lack of investment. At that time, Instagram had grown to one billion users, about 40 percent of Facebook’s size, yet the photo-sharing app had only 1,000 employees compared to 35,000 employees at Facebook, he said.

“We were by far the fastest-growing team,” Mr. Systrom said. “We produced the most revenue, and relative to what we should have been at the time, I felt like we should have been much larger.”