During the first week of Meta’s antitrust trial, documents from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provided insight into Meta’s internal challenges in maintaining Facebook’s cultural relevance. Emails from 2022 revealed that Meta executives were considering various strategies to revitalize Facebook’s success, acknowledging its declining cultural significance. By 2025, Meta continues to face this issue. In January, Mark Zuckerberg stated during the company’s Q4 earnings call that the goal for the year is to restore Facebook’s cultural relevance by returning to its original format, “OG Facebook.” A part of this strategy includes the recent launch of a revamped Friends tab.
In a series of messages from April 2022, presented as evidence during the trial, Zuckerberg expressed concerns about Facebook’s outdated “Friends” structure compared to other platforms focusing on “Following.” He even considered abandoning the Friends format and suggested deleting everyone’s Facebook friends to start anew.
Zuckerberg’s emails highlighted worries about Facebook losing cultural relevance and proposed solutions such as adopting a following model instead of friending and potentially wiping everyone’s friend graphs to start fresh.
— new from TechCrunch