Internal emails from Meta executives, presented during the company’s ongoing antitrust trial with the Federal Trade Commission, illustrate growing concerns within the company about Facebook’s declining cultural relevance. Dating back to early 2022, these communications show senior leadership grappling with Facebook’s identity and future direction, and discussing significant changes to rejuvenate the social platform.
In a series of April 2022 emails, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed worries about the noticeable decline in Facebook’s cultural impact. Despite stable engagement metrics in several regions, Zuckerberg foresaw potential long-term risks if the app continued to lose cultural resonance. He emphasized that Facebook’s success was integral to Meta as a whole, stating clearly that even strong performances from Instagram and WhatsApp would not sufficiently offset Facebook’s decline.
Central to these discussions was the concern about Facebook’s underlying “friend” graph, the traditional connection-based social structure that the app originally popularized. Zuckerberg identified this friend-based architecture as increasingly outdated, particularly compared to platforms built around a “follow” model like Instagram and Twitter, community-based systems akin to Reddit, or purely algorithmic-driven experiences such as TikTok.
Acknowledging that Facebook’s familiar system of sending and accepting friend requests felt cumbersome and outdated to many users, Zuckerberg proposed potentially radical strategies. One of the most dramatic ideas discussed was entirely replacing Facebook’s friending model with a more modern follow-based framework, even suggesting at one point the possibility of wiping clean users’ friend lists altogether and having everyone start anew. Recognizing the risk involved, Zuckerberg advocated trialing such a significant shift first in a small market before considering a wider global rollout.
Fast-forward three years, the cultural resonance issue continues to be top-of-mind for Meta. In the company’s recent Q4 earnings call, Zuckerberg again emphasized the goal of restoring Facebook’s social relevance in 2025 through a return to its original, core values—a strategy dubbed internally as “OG Facebook.” Consistent with this approach, Meta recently rolled out a redesigned Friends tab aimed at recapturing user interest and revitalizing social connections on the platform.
The emails disclosed during the FTC trial thus reveal a long-standing and continuing internal struggle within Meta—how to reinvent Facebook’s social model, refresh its appeal, and guide it back to a place of widespread cultural significance in an increasingly competitive social landscape.
