During Meta Trial, the co-founder of Instagram said that the startup was denied resources

Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, testified on Tuesday in a federal antitrust historic trial that he had left Meta in 2018 because his business was denied resources.

The government argued that Meta had bought Instagram in 2012 as part of a “purchasing or bury strategy” to illegally cement its monopoly on social networks by killing its rivals. Last week, the current and old leaders Meta said that the social media giant, formerly known as Facebook, used its deep pockets to invest in Instagram after its purchase.

In the testimony of the American district court of the Columbia district, Mr. Systrom painted a different image, saying that he had left Meta because Mark Zuckerberg, the managing director, does not invest enough. At that time, Instagram had reached 1 billion users, or about 40% of the size of Facebook, but the application for sharing photos had that 1,000 employees against 35,000 employees on Facebook, he said.

“We were by far the fastest team.

Systrom said he had found the confusing decisions. When asked by an FTC lawyer why Mr. Zuckerberg could have decided to give Instagram less resources, Mr. Systrom said that it was a coherent model during his mandate in Meta.

“Mark did not invest in Instagram because he thought we were a threat to their growth,” he said, referring to the prioritization of Mr. Facebook Zuckerberg.