Mark Zuckerberg considered deleting everyone's Facebook friends in 2022, admits platform's focus has shifted

midian182

midian182

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In brief: If you think Facebook has strayed far from its roots as a platform that connected friends and family, you're not alone. Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shares this view. He also considered purging every friend from users' accounts in 2022 and having them start from scratch.

Zuckerberg was on the witness stand on Monday to defend Meta against a case brought by the FTC in 2022. The agency alleges the company created a market-dominating monopoly when it bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, thereby violating US competition laws. The FTC wants to break up Meta by spinning off one of these apps.

The government argues that Meta attracting 3.3 billion users to its platforms is a result of lack of reasonable alternatives.

When asked about Facebook's focus moving away from connecting with friends and family to news, groups, and other third-party content, Zuckerberg admitted that, "It's the case that over time, the 'interest' part of that has gotten built out more than the 'friend' part."

"(Users are) connected to a lot more groups and other kinds of things. The 'friend' part has gone down quite a bit, but it's still something we care about," he added.

The Facebook feed, once filled with posts and images from people you know, is now an algorithmic sea of sponsored content, group posts, and other recommendations from various pages and accounts. In Zuckerberg's words, the feed "has turned into more of a broad discovery and entertainment space."

The hearing also revealed that Zuckerberg had a "crazy idea" in 2022 that sounds like it would have been universally hated: wiping everyone's friend connections.

Zuckerberg was worried about Facebook's reputation in 2022. Apps like TikTok had become more culturally relevant, especially among young people, while Facebook was, and often still is, seen as the social media site for "old people," which seems to cover anyone over 30.

Zuckerberg proposed a radical solution in an internal email at the time, revealed by the government during the hearing. "Option 1. Double down on Friending," he wrote. "One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again." Graphs in this case refers to friend connections.

Also read: Silicon Valley crosswalks hacked to play fake AI voices of Musk and Zuckerberg

Tom Alison, the head of Facebook, was unsure about the plan. "I'm not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG [Instagram]," he wrote.

Zuckerberg replied with, "Do you have a sense of how much work it would be to convert profiles to a follow model?"

Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook never followed through with his plans for a mass unfriending, which is probably a good thing.

Facebook is aware that many users miss the days when the platform was all about connecting with others. The company announced last month that "the magic of friends has fallen away," and it would therefore be introducing several so-called "OG" Facebook experiences throughout the year. The first of these is a new Friends tab, which will show all your friends' posts, stories, reels, and birthdays. Friend requests will also be under this section.

Masthead: Anthony Quintano

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Mark Zuckerberg considered deleting everyone's Facebook friends in 2022, admits platform's focus has shifted

 
I thought he wanted to do the opposite, which is why Meta was formed to create a multi-function platform integrating filial ties and friendship but also doing business.
 
OortCloud said:
You know just how ridiculously childish, fadish and 'next big thing' the Internet and social media in general has become when a platform is considered for old people when they are over 30...
Click to expand...
That in itself is an 'old people' comment. And on top of that, a non-sequitur.
 
guillejp said:
That in itself is an 'old people' comment. And on top of that, a non-sequitur.
Click to expand...
That says more about you than them. What they said was a smart person comment. It's also perfectly in line with the subject matter being discussed.
 
F*ck this guy. I wish he had taken his father's money and started a McDonalds franchise, the world would've been a better place instead of this toxic, dumbed down, polarized clown show we have now.
 
Some things I liked to read:
1. Zuckerberg is not afraid of making big mistakes and doing big, dramatic changes to cover them up.
2. Even though it stopped being Facebook's motto, "move fast and break things" seems to be still at the root of Meta's corporate culture.
3. He's fine in spinning off Instagram and/or WhatsApp, but especially Instagram, where he can still make profits with ads. It's tougher to do that on WhatsApp by design — even if communications are not as securely encrypted as they are supposed to be, people would drop out *immediately* from WhatsApp as soon as the first stream of "relevant ads" (meaning: we have lots of alternatives; we're just using WhatsApp so long as it's still the platform we like to use).

There might be a few more good things he said which I've mostly missed.

But the point remains: I joined Facebook eons ago, because all my international friends were on Facebook (nobody I knew locally had a clue about what Facebook was, before the media started to use it). It's been 12 years or so since I last "used" Facebook as, well, as it was supposed to be.

*All* social media, sooner or later, will converge towards an ad-selling machine, fuelled by algorithms, and as soon as that happens, you'll *never* see your so-called "timeline"... again. I mean, someone has to pay for the cost of keeping the systems up, right?

I've joined BlueSky, and I find it interesting so far — because I'm not yet subject to the flood of ads and irrelevant messages from people I never heard about. I still have this feeling of "let's see what my friends are up to". But I'm also aware that BlueSky is running on "borrowed time", so to speak — a few capital ventures, and a huge chunk of money from Twitter, which was part of the complex agreements with Musk, who will be more than happy to stop paying a cent — especially once BlueSky starts Making Money Fast™ (or shows some signs of doing so).

Personally, I have lost my appetite of social media around the time when ISIS was still recruiting people on so-called private groups on Facebook. That was just a glimpse of the dark future we're in today. And 99% of the problem was caused by social media's premature launch to a world-wide audience that simply lacks the know-how to understand how easy you can be manipulated — into reading things you shouldn't, watch things that are worthless, and get to buy useless things which you never wanted or needed in the first place.

But, alas, so much relies upon social media working the way it does. Facebook might have started the trend (hint: and it was only thanks to its early partnership with Microsoft, which told Zuckerberg how to profit from ads; he had no clue how to make money from Facebook before that), but they are not seriously "going back" to some other format while breaking its whole ecosystem. Look at the millions of companies, worldwide, which rely upon Facebook's existence to, well, provide their own services. It's a gigantic industry out there, all pouring money and resources to "do social networking thingies" built upon Facebook's platform. Everybody profits. Even smartphone manufacturers — if it weren't for social media, who would feel the urge to have a complex (and expensive!) computer in your pocket to make phone calls, when any $50 mobile phone could do the same?

Facebook drives not one, but several industries, and all these are directly dependent on their existence. Also, there is no "replacement product", so to speak — thus, the issue about Meta owning an "effective monopoly". This is true for both the advertisers and the users, of course. You have solid, well-established alternatives, but which fall short of Facebook's purpose. Just consider the reality in 2025:
- You have LinkedIn, a Microsoft company. Useful for getting a job. Boring to Hell and back otherwise.
- You *had* Twitter. Now you have X, the ultimate social media — if you're a WASP. These amount to a hundred million people or so, but that's it. There is nothing in it for anyone else.
- You have TikTok or YouTube. Both are appealing if you just want to consume content done by absolute strangers who are entertaining. There is no conversation going on. You're either one of the rock stars, or one of the millions in the audience who is happy to have a ticket for the concert. That doesn't mean that you don't have interesting or amusing things there. Of course you do. But it's a different kind of "social media". I prefer to call it "interactive TV-over-IP", but even that is being too kind — the vast majority of viewers don't "Interact" at all with, they just swipe to the next video.

One might argue that Instagram is an "alternative", and sure, I grant you that, but it's The Other Meta company — the one for immature youngsters. I, a humble 55-year-old, have an account there, mostly to follow Bernie Sanders (80+) and Banksy (age unknown, but suspected to be in the 60s). Why I don't do the same on Facebook, you ask? Well... Banksy doesn't like Facebook, but he doesn't mind Instagram :) That's the only reason, really.

Granted, there is nothing that the US Congress can do to Meta to "harm" them. Spinning off Instagram, _de jure_, will not be _de facto_: they'll still be sharing common infrastructure, obviously. The difference is that their relationship will be one of provider-customer, instead of internal number-shuffling between departments. Additionally, Instagram might get its own IPO, and double Meta's value, so it's not exactly a bad idea (definitely a good one for Zuckerberg!). They will *still* be able to claim that Meta, the parent company holding all the others, has a 3.3 billion audience for spam and ads. It's just that, individually, each company might have less than that, but, overall, it will make no difference. It might even get Zuckerberg and his other stakeholders richer. And what's the problem with *that*?

No, the *only* blow that can be dealt to Facebook is to force them to respect journalist/editorial ethics.

But under the 'new administration' in power in the US, that's extremely NOT likely to happen EVER.
 
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Gwyneth Llewelyn said:
Some things I liked to read:
1. Zuckerberg is not afraid of making big mistakes and doing big, dramatic changes to cover them up.
2. Even though it stopped being Facebook's motto, "move fast and break things" seems to be still at the root of Meta's corporate culture.
3. He's fine in spinning off Instagram and/or WhatsApp, but especially Instagram, where he can still make profits with ads. It's tougher to do that on WhatsApp by design — even if communications are not as securely encrypted as they are supposed to be, people would drop out *immediately* from WhatsApp as soon as the first stream of "relevant ads" (meaning: we have lots of alternatives; we're just using WhatsApp so long as it's still the platform we like to use).

There might be a few more good things he said which I've mostly missed.

But the point remains: I joined Facebook eons ago, because all my international friends were on Facebook (nobody I knew locally had a clue about what Facebook was, before the media started to use it). It's been 12 years or so since I last "used" Facebook as, well, as it was supposed to be.

*All* social media, sooner or later, will converge towards an ad-selling machine, fuelled by algorithms, and as soon as that happens, you'll *never* see your so-called "timeline"... again. I mean, someone has to pay for the cost of keeping the systems up, right?

I've joined BlueSky, and I find it interesting so far — because I'm not yet subject to the flood of ads and irrelevant messages from people I never heard about. I still have this feeling of "let's see what my friends are up to". But I'm also aware that BlueSky is running on "borrowed time", so to speak — a few capital ventures, and a huge chunk of money from Twitter, which was part of the complex agreements with Musk, who will be more than happy to stop paying a cent — especially once BlueSky starts Making Money Fast™ (or shows some signs of doing so).

Personally, I have lost my appetite of social media around the time when ISIS was still recruiting people on so-called private groups on Facebook. That was just a glimpse of the dark future we're in today. And 99% of the problem was caused by social media's premature launch to a world-wide audience that simply lacks the know-how to understand how easy you can be manipulated — into reading things you shouldn't, watch things that are worthless, and get to buy useless things which you never wanted or needed in the first place.

But, alas, so much relies upon social media working the way it does. Facebook might have started the trend (hint: and it was only thanks to its early partnership with Microsoft, which told Zuckerberg how to profit from ads; he had no clue how to make money from Facebook before that), but they are not seriously "going back" to some other format while breaking its whole ecosystem. Look at the millions of companies, worldwide, which rely upon Facebook's existence to, well, provide their own services. It's a gigantic industry out there, all pouring money and resources to "do social networking thingies" built upon Facebook's platform. Everybody profits. Even smartphone manufacturers — if it weren't for social media, who would feel the urge to have a complex (and expensive!) computer in your pocket to make phone calls, when any $50 mobile phone could do the same?

Facebook drives not one, but several industries, and all these are directly dependent on their existence. Also, there is no "replacement product", so to speak — thus, the issue about Meta owning an "effective monopoly". This is true for both the advertisers and the users, of course. You have solid, well-established alternatives, but which fall short of Facebook's purpose. Just consider the reality in 2025:
- You have LinkedIn, a Microsoft company. Useful for getting a job. Boring to Hell and back otherwise.
- You *had* Twitter. Now you have X, the ultimate social media — if you're a WASP. These amount to a hundred million people or so, but that's it. There is nothing in it for anyone else.
- You have TikTok or YouTube. Both are appealing if you just want to consume content done by absolute strangers who are entertaining. There is no conversation going on. You're either one of the rock stars, or one of the millions in the audience who is happy to have a ticket for the concert. That doesn't mean that you don't have interesting or amusing things there. Of course you do. But it's a different kind of "social media". I prefer to call it "interactive TV-over-IP", but even that is being too kind — the vast majority of viewers don't "Interact" at all with, they just swipe to the next video.

One might argue that Instagram is an "alternative", and sure, I grant you that, but it's The Other Meta company — the one for immature youngsters. I, a humble 55-year-old, have an account there, mostly to follow Bernie Sanders (80+) and Banksy (age unknown, but suspected to be in the 60s). Why I don't do the same on Facebook, you ask? Well... Banksy doesn't like Facebook, but he doesn't mind Instagram :) That's the only reason, really.

Granted, there is nothing that the US Congress can do to Meta to "harm" them. Spinning off Instagram, _de jure_, will not be _de facto_: they'll still be sharing common infrastructure, obviously. The difference is that their relationship will be one of provider-customer, instead of internal number-shuffling between departments. Additionally, Instagram might get its own IPO, and double Meta's value, so it's not exactly a bad idea (definitely a good one for Zuckerberg!). They will *still* be able to claim that Meta, the parent company holding all the others, has a 3.3 billion audience for spam and ads. It's just that, individually, each company might have less than that, but, overall, it will make no difference. It might even get Zuckerberg and his other stakeholders richer. And what's the problem with *that*?

No, the *only* blow that can be dealt to Facebook is to force them to respect journalist/editorial ethics.

But under the 'new administration' in power in the US, that's extremely NOT likely to happen EVER.
Click to expand...
I tend to agree with your take.
As for “move fast and break things”, when you reach the elephantesque size of Facebook, the slightest, slowest move you make may cause mayhem.
 
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"The Facebook feed, once filled with posts and images from people you know, is now an algorithmic sea of sponsored content, group posts, and other recommendations from various pages and accounts."

I beg to differ. With a bit of work FaceBook can be 'forced' to ONLY display what friends/people you know post. No ads, no news, no other trash.
I've been doing this for many years now. My FaceBook's a Good Place.
It's not super difficult to make this happen.
 
I can't name anything beneficial this guy has actually done. He joins the "Dickless List" along with Trump, and Walter Peck 😂 And ah Musk isn't on there cause he helped push electric vehicles and started space x, but his still a muppet!
 
Anton Longshot said:
I beg to differ. With a bit of work FaceBook can be 'forced' to ONLY display what friends/people you know post. No ads, no news, no other trash.
I've been doing this for many years now. My FaceBook's a Good Place.
It's not super difficult to make this happen.
Click to expand...

@Anton Longshot I'll totally take your word on it — because I haven't got the slightest inkling on how that is accomplished.
Then again, for me, it's too late. Social media were fun when they were a novelty. No, I don't wish to spend 'a bit of work' to change Facebook to do all that; I can spend that time in doing far more interesting things.
Such as, say, posting here... 😅
 
I like the friend part. I like the group concept but don't like how everything has to be "AWESOME" or you get the boot. I don't like getting stuff out of my feed that I didn't axe for. FB doesn't make money by being friendly
 
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