About a year before the Federal Trade Commission first opened its antitrust investigation into Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, CEO Mark Zuckerberg internally suggested “the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off popular photo-sharing app Instagram in 2018 over concerns about the growing risk of antitrust scrutiny, according to a document shown at a trial in Washington on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered separating Instagram from its parent company due to worries about antitrust litigation, according to an email shown Tuesday on the second day of an antitrust trial alleging Meta illegally monopolized the social media market.