| Hey all, it's Sarah Frier. Today is Instagram's 10th birthday. Reporters received an email with some celebratory statistics: There are 900 million daily emoji reactions on Instagram, and 50% of users watch a video each day. But two numbers were conspicuously absent from the report. How many users does Instagram have? And how much revenue does it bring in for parent Facebook Inc.? When I asked, Instagram declined to comment. Instagram's size is a high-stakes question right now as the company attracts heightened government scrutiny. We aren't getting transparency into a critical business line because of Facebook's antitrust strategy. In the coming days, Congress is expected to release results of a major monopoly probe into the biggest tech companies. The long-awaited report could include recommendations for legislation to break those companies up. Facebook hasn't disclosed how many people use Instagram since 2018, six years after it bought the app, when the founders were still there and argued with CEO Mark Zuckerberg that 1 billion users was enough of a milestone to talk about. Facebook has never posted Instagram's unique revenue, though sources have told Bloomberg it's the fastest-growing part of Facebook's advertising business, contributing about $20 billion in 2019. In anticipation of the antitrust report, Facebook has been arguing against scrutiny of its Instagram acquisition. In a paper circulated last week, the company says regulators only care about the app's tremendous power because Facebook made it so. "Facebook has built Instagram from a niche photo-sharing app with no monetization plans into the phenomenal success story that it is today—and which it never would have become without Facebook's investment of time, resources, and know-how," the company argued. Instagram has spent eight of its 10 years of life at Facebook, absolutely drawing upon the larger company's resources and experience to make its product into a cultural phenomenon. But it also achieved some of that success in spite of Facebook, resisting some of the parent company's grow-at-all-costs ethos to build an app with a comparatively positive brand. Now, though, Facebook wants to erase any distinction between the apps in the minds of regulators. If the government thought of Instagram as a separate product, they might think it was possible to detach from its parent—which would be Facebook's worst-case scenario. The company is racing to integrate Instagram further with Facebook, merging messaging, shopping, and other operations. Facebook is meanwhile arguing that breaking up the company would be near-impossible, because of all the work already done to tie the apps together. Facebook has made it clear that it wants regulators to focus on all the benefits it brings to Instagram. But it's also important to look at the benefits Instagram brings to Facebook. If regulators really are trying to understand the impact of one company—majority controlled by one man—owning two of the world's most powerful social networks, they should get the numbers. —Sarah Frier | 
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