Facebook without friends? Mark Zuckerberg once considered it

Mark Zuckerberg

Can you imagine logging into Facebook and finding your friends list wiped clean? Well, it turns out, Mark Zuckerberg once actually thought about it.This surprising idea came to light during Meta’s major anti-trust trial in the US, which kicked off earlier this week. As part of the case, several internal emails were made public and one of them, sent by Zuckerberg in 2022, revealed a wild proposal.

According to a report by Fortune, Zuckerberg pitched the idea of deleting everyone’s Facebook friends and asking users to rebuild their networks from scratch.

In his email, he wrote: “Option 1. Double on Friending. One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start over again.”

Why such a drastic move? It seems Zuckerberg was worried about Facebook’s falling popularity, especially among teenagers, who had shifted to Instagram as their go-to platform. The plan was likely aimed at refreshing engagement by making people reconnect in new ways.

But not everyone at Meta was on board. Facebook’s head, Tom Alison, quickly raised concerns, saying that friending was too important for Instagram’s own ecosystem and scrapping it might not work.

Zuckerberg reportedly also floated another idea --moving Facebook away from its friend-based model to a follower-based one, more like Instagram and Twitter. Neither of these ideas ever made it to the public, but these internal conversations show how Meta has been trying to keep up with changing social media trends.

This all surfaced as part of the ongoing legal battle between Meta and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has accused Meta of running an illegal monopoly in the social media market by buying up rising competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralise any threats.

The case, which has been years in the making, could even lead to Meta being forced to separate Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook. For now, though, your Facebook friends list is safe — but it’s clear that big changes have been considered behind the scenes.