Thread by @WIRED

In September 2018, Instagram's cofounders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, announced they were quitting. While they played nice in the press, years of tension with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg had reached a breaking point. This is what really happened. 1/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

The first seeds of tension were planted not long after Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. As Instagram started to skyrocket, FB initially watched with pride. But the dynamic curdled. 2/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

Systrom’s glowing press coverage didn’t help. According to someone at Facebook, in 2014 Zuckerberg ordered that no other execs should sit for magazine profiles without his or Sheryl Sandberg’s approval. 3/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

By 2017, it was clear some at Facebook believed Instagram’s growth was cannibalizing its own. That year, data was presented to senior execs that suggested people were sharing less inside Facebook in part because of Instagram. 4/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

In July 2018, before an earnings call where FB disclosed its growth was slowing, Zuckerberg sought to put IG in its place. He debated with close allies whether to say IG owed its growth to FB. He ultimately tempered that point with praise. 5/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

After the call, Facebook’s stock dropped by nearly 20%. But Zuckerberg didn’t forget about Insta­gram. He asked for a list of ways Facebook supported traffic to Instagram, then pulled away all of those supports. 6/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

Systrom sent a memo to his entire staff explaining Zuckerberg’s decision. He said he disagreed with the move but was committed to the changes. This enraged Facebook, which was terrified the memo would leak. Systrom soon departed on paternity leave. 7/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

The tensions didn’t let up. In August, Facebook made changes to Instagram’s simple design—long a point of pride for the platform—and prototyped a location-­tracking service inside the app. This was exactly the kind of privacy intrusion it had resisted. 8/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

Later that summer, Facebook told Instagram—which was growing as strong as ever—that it was slashing IG’s hiring budget. The tension between the two platforms had finally boiled over.

On a Monday morning, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger quit. 9/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

This is just one piece of Facebook’s fifteen months of hell. Read the full story on the biggest shifts ever to take place inside the world’s biggest social network here: 10/ wired.trib.al/rmWpxY2

Liked this article? Support WIRED and help our journalists write the next big story on big tech. Just 1 year for $5 in our spring sale. wired.trib.al/MFy484V