Featured Image Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty
These tech bosses sometimes go mad with power, and as some accuse Elon Musk of lording it over us all as the owner of SpaceX and Tesla, head of the DOGE, and overlord of X, it seems he's not alone in his quest for domination.
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has suggested that he nearly went on a power trip and explains why he toyed with deleting everyone's Facebook friends back in 2022.
There's been recent controversy surrounding Mark Zuckerberg, with many saying he's taking Facebook down the same route as X by stripping out third-party fact-checkers.
Still, that's nothing compared to the backlash he would've received if he wiped out many decades of collecting Facebook friends in 2022.
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As Zuckerberg took to the stand to defend Meta against a Federal Trade Commission case that was brought forward in 2022.
The FTC claims that Meta created a tech monopoly when it bought Instagram in 2012 and then WhatsApp in 2014.
The FTC hopes to break up the Meta monopoly, which could force Zuckerberg to sell one of the platforms.
Speaking during the case, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook has moved away from the connectivity part and is heading more toward news, groups, and third-party content. Discussing Meta's current trajectory, Zuckerberg said: "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."
This was hammered home by the reveal that Zuckerberg planned on purging your friends lists in 2022. An email was revealed as part of the landmark antitrust case, confirming that our Friends lists were once on the chopping block.
As shared by Fortune, the tech mogul floated the 'crazy idea' of deleting your friends to boost Facebook's 'cultural relevance', with the email apparently stating: "Option 1. Double down on Friending. One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again."
FTC v Meta Day 1. Opening arguments for FTC laid out its case. As predicted, Meta tried to blow hole into market definition. This actually comes later in trial so not dwelling but will add some context at end. But first witness 1 was CEO Zuckerberg. Dead to rights on conduct. /1
— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) April 14, 2025
Although the idea was that forcing you to rebuild your friend network from scratch could draw people back to Facebook, this was met with skepticism from Facebook head Tom Alison. Back then, Alison responded: "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]."
Doubling down on this plan, Zuckerberg added: "Do you have a sense of how much work it would be to convert profiles to a follow model?"
Even though the mass culling of our Facebook friends never happened, Meta continues to try and mix things up. After announcing that "the magic of friends has fallen away," Meta has rolled out plans for an OG Facebook that's being kicked off with a 'new' Friends tab that will supposedly go back to seeing posts and stories from those on your friends lists instead of a deluge from across the platform.
Zuckerberg better not be coming for our carefully curated friends list.
