'Crazy, crazy idea': Zuckerberg wanted to delete everyone's Facebook friends lists. Here's why
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg wanted to delete everyone's friend lists once each year. This was a "crazy idea" he had in 2022, amongst a few others. World Trending
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg thought about deleting everyone's Facebook friends and wanted to create a feed consisting of only ads, The Verge reported. He made the revelation during the antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission that started on April 14. The FTC alleges that Meta, Facebook at the time, illegally monopolised the market for "personal social networking services" by buying Instagram and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg's testimony was attended by only a handful of media personnel. He talked about how competition from other platforms got to him, and he had some "crazy ideas", including wiping clean users' friends list and buying Snapchat as he tried to build his social media empire.
Zuckerberg wanted to "wipe off" everyone's Facebook friend lists
The Verge reported that Zuckerberg revealed that in 2022, he came up with an idea to get people to use Facebook more. He thought that if everyone's friend lists were deleted and they had to "start again", it could get them to engage more with the platform.
Zuckerberg felt that Facebook’s "cultural relevance is decreasing quickly", which led him to come up with the plan that he wanted to use in a staggered manner. He proposed starting the plan with a smaller country and seeing how it went.
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“Even if [Instagram] and [WhatsApp] do well, 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," he said in the Washington, DC courtroom.
Zuckerberg wanted to make Instagram a separate entity
He also revealed that at one point he considered "spinning Instagram", that is, making it a separate entity. In a 2018 email to his executives, Zuckerberg wrote that, "while most companies resist break-ups, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up," The Verge reported.
The FTC alleges that Facebook was showing more and more ads to users, knowing fully well that they had nowhere else to go. Zuckerberg responded that users "think ads are as good as regular posts", and the company thought about making "a feed full of only ads."
Zuckerberg's offer to buy Snapchat
Meta also wanted to buy Snapchat, and in October 2013, he told his executives that news might leak that they offered $6 billion to acquire Snapchat. “I delivered the offer to Evan [Spiegel, Snapchat’s CEO] and he seemed to take it well,” Zuckerberg wrote. However, Spiegel declined the offer 5 hours later, saying that he wanted to build it himself.
Zuckerberg stated that had he accepted the offer, the platform would have grown much faster.
