April 16, 2025 – During the ongoing antitrust lawsuit trial against Meta, which commenced this Monday, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, disclosed a surprising consideration: the idea of erasing all Facebook users’ friend connections to enhance the platform’s cultural influence.
In 2022, Zuckerberg outlined a strategy in a letter to Meta employees, suggesting “wiping everyone’s friend graph clean and starting anew” as a way to address Facebook’s declining influence in the social networking sphere. He believed that forcing users to rebuild their friendships could reignite their engagement with the platform.
However, this “potentially wild idea,” as Zuckerberg referred to it, faced opposition from other top executives within Meta, including Facebook’s head, Tom Allison. Consequently, the proposal was never put into action.
Additional strategies Zuckerberg considered to maintain the company’s sway, such as shifting Facebook from a friend-based model to a fan-based one, also failed to materialize, according to evidence presented during the trial.
In recent weeks, Facebook has re-emphasized its focus on friend connections by revamping the “Friends” tab to revert to its original “classic Facebook” format. The new Friends tab aggregates friend requests and content shared by friends, including posts, short videos, stories, and birthday notifications.
During the fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call, Zuckerberg assured investors, “I believe Facebook has the potential to become even more culturally significant than it is today. I think some of these moves will bring Facebook back to the way it was originally used.”
