Mark Zuckerberg once suggested wiping all Facebook friends lists to boost usage

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a “potentially crazy idea” in 2022 to get people using Facebook more: deleting everyone’s friends’ lists. The possibility was discussed on Monday via internal emails shown by the FTC as Zuckerberg testified during Meta’s antitrust trial.

Zuckerberg floated the idea of considering “wiping everyone’s graphs” — their friends lists — “and having them start again,” possibly once a year, noted The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath, who observed the testimony inside the courtroom. Meta’s CEO said he was concerned that Facebook’s “cultural relevance is decreasing quickly.” Zuckerberg proposed a staggered approach, like starting with an experiment in a smaller country, in case too many people quit Facebook in response to the move. “Even if [Instagram] and [WhatsApp] do well,” he said, “I don’t see a way for our company to succeed in the way we need if FB falters, so we need to get this right.”

Head of Facebook Tom Allison replied, saying he wasn’t sure the idea was “viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is” to Instagram, according to Business Insider. The outlet says that, in his reply, Zuckerberg also asked “how much work it would be to convert profiles to a follow model.”

When a Federal Trade Commission attorney reminded Zuckerberg about the idea during questioning on Monday, Business Insider writes that the executive replied, “As far as I can tell, we never did that.”

Meta has taken a different approach to revitalizing the Facebook experience lately, with the recent introduction of a revamped friends tab that doesn’t show algorithmic content to users. In January, Zuckerberg said that a big focus for the company this year would be to “get back to some OG Facebook.”