Facebook might have to break up with Insta and WhatsApp— we break down the numbers

Blowing up the fambam chat... Facebook's precious "family of apps" might have to split up. The FTC and 46 states just served up some major lawsuits, accusing FB of illegally crushing competition by buying rising rivals. It's one of the biggest tech antitrust cases in decades.

• 2012: The term #influencer was barely a thing when the FTC approved Facebook's purchase of Instagram for $1B.
• 2014: The FTC greenlit Facebook's $19B splurge on WhatsApp, your go-to for sending memes to your foreign cousin.
• 2020: The FTC, whose life goal is to target and destroy unfair business practices, wants FB to separate from Insta and WhatsApp.

Losing the plug... While these lawsuits could take years to resolve, losing precious Instagram and WhatsApp could be an existential crisis for Facebook (Zuck's words). Partly, that's because WhatsApp and Insta users are growing faster than Facebook and Messenger users. Here's what we dug up from FB's September earnings report:

• Finding: Daily users on FB and Messenger grew 12% to 1.8B people. But the "Family" of apps' total daily users, including Insta and WhatsApp, grew 15% to 2.5B.
• Conclusion: WhatsApp and Instagram clearly boosted overall user growth. Also: around 700M people use WhatsApp and/or Insta daily without touching Facebook.