Internally, the CEO once proposed wiping out the entire list of Facebook users’ friends, so that they could start from scratch.

During the first hearing of the antitrust lawsuit initiated by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Meta, an internal detail came to light. It’s a “crazy idea” that Zuckerberg once proposed in 2022 within Meta.

Specifically, in the emails, the Meta CEO expressed concern that Facebook’s relevance is “declining rapidly”. He suggested wiping out the user’s entire friend list and letting them “start over”, maybe even once a year.

The content of the 2022 email sent by Zuckerberg himself to Facebook’s senior executives was released in court. In it, he wrote: “Option 1. Invest heavily in the Friending model. A potentially crazy idea is to try wiping out the user’s entire friend graph and let them start over.” The “graph” here refers to the friend connection system, the core foundation of the Facebook experience.

According to Alex Heath of The Verge, who was present in person at the trial, Zuckerberg proposed a gradual implementation of the idea, such as pre-testing in a small country. The reason he gave was that if the action was too strong, users could leave Facebook en masse.

In the email, Zuckerberg wrote: “Even if Instagram and WhatsApp work well, I don’t see a path for our company to succeed if Facebook collapses. Therefore, we must do this right.”

Responding to this idea, Tom Alison, the director of Facebook, was reserved. “I’m not sure your No. 1 option (strengthening the friend model) is feasible considering how important the friends feature is to Instagram,” Alison said.

Zuckerberg replied that he did not understand Alison’s concerns, and asked one more question. “Can you estimate how much effort it takes to convert an entire user profile to a follow model?” the CEO wrote.

When the FTC lawyers reiterated the email in court, Zuckerberg confirmed that the radical plan had never been implemented. “As far as I know, we’ve never done that,” he clarified.

In his testimony, Zuckerberg also acknowledged that Facebook today is very different from when he founded the social network more than 20 years ago. Connecting with friends is no longer an important goal. “The friendship-making aspect has decreased significantly,” he admitted. According to him, the news feed has now become a larger space for discovery and entertainment than a place for intimate communication between friends.

In federal court in Washington, D.C., Zuckerberg also answered questions from the FTC about the acquisitions that have shaped the Meta empire today, namely Instagram (in 2012, for $1 billion) and WhatsApp (in 2014, for $19 billion).

The US government accused Meta of violating competition laws. The group made these 2 deals to eliminate potential competitors, maintain a monopoly position and apply a “takeover or elimination” strategy. An internal email from 2008 presented by the FTC in court quoted Zuckerberg as saying: “It’s better to buy than to compete.”

In the introduction, lawyer Daniel Matheson representing the FTC argued: “Meta has for many years made huge economic gains, far exceeding what can be expected in a healthy competitive environment.” Matheson emphasized that it is the strategy of “acquiring instead of competing” that has helped Meta maintain its monopoly position, especially in the field of content-sharing apps between friends and family. This is the core area of Facebook and Instagram.

However, Meta’s legal representative, lawyer Mark Hansen, vehemently refuted this allegation, saying that the FTC’s lawsuit is “a mess of theories that go against reality and the law”. According to Mr. Hansen, the two acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp are completely legal. Meta is under fierce competitive pressure from rivals such as TikTok and YouTube.

The trial is expected to last up to eight weeks, according to Business Insider. Judge James Boasberg will be the one to make the final verdict without a jury in this case. If the FTC wins, the consequences could be far-reaching. Meta will be forced to separate WhatsApp and Instagram.

The book exposes the dark side of Facebook

Jeff Horwitz’s “Broken Code” is based on more than 25,000 pages of internal documents, revealing the controversies and conflicts within Facebook and its incalculable impact on humanity. The author focuses on the violent upheavals of the largest social network on the planet in recent years.