Summary: During his testimony, internal emails reveal that Mark Zuckerberg considered wiping everyone’s Facebook friends lists annually to regain relevance. The emails also showed he once entertained spinning off Instagram—ironically, the very breakup the FTC now seeks to enforce.

Social media networks are a trend. They come and go. How many of you remember the classics like Friendster and MySpace? Facebook also used to be relevant until other social media platforms came around, like Vine, Snapchat, TikTok, and so on. This is why it’s actually illuminating to see what goes on behind closed doors at Meta.

During Meta’s antitrust trial, several internal emails revealed some of the wilder ideas Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had over the years.

Wiping Facebook friends lists

One of Zuckerberg’s more outlandish ideas was back in 2022. The emails show that the CEO worried about Facebook’s decreasing cultural relevance, so much so that he suggested deleting everyone’s friends lists. It wasn’t even going to be a one-time thing, either. According to the email, Zuckerberg proposed doing it once a year and having everyone start from scratch again.

The CEO noted that even if other Meta-owned platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram 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.” Luckily, cooler heads prevailed. The head of Facebook, Tom Allison, replied to Zuckerberg’s idea by saying he wasn’t sure how viable the idea was. Mark Zuckerberg confirmed during his testimony that the company never put this plan into action. The CEO was quoted as saying, “As far as I can tell, we never did that.”

Spinning Instagram off

But the ideas don’t stop there. It also seems that at one point in time, Meta had the idea of spinning Instagram off into its own company. Ironically enough, this is something Meta is fighting the FTC to keep from happening.

If the FTC wins its antitrust case against Meta, it could force the company to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta is arguing that it shouldn’t have to. However, in the email from 2018, Zuckerberg was quoted as saying, “While most companies resist break-ups, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up.”

However, it seems that Zuckerberg might have had the hindsight that this day could come. His memo noted that there was “a non-trivial chance we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years.” He also warned his team of executives that, “We should keep in mind that there’s a real chance that all our work to build a family of apps may be something we don’t get to keep.”

“It’s not too hard to imagine the calls increasing to break up the tech companies, and the next democratic president taking action to do so. At that point, we will face extremely high pressure, brand damage and distraction.”

A feed full of ads

One way that Facebook and Instagram make money for Meta is through ads. It is estimated that in 2025, Instagram could bring in $37.13 billion in ad revenue, which accounts for more than half of Meta’s ad revenue in the US.

This is why Meta doesn’t want to break up its company. Losing Instagram could cause irreparable damage to Meta’s bottom line. In fact, the company’s reliance on ads is also the basis for another one of Zuckerberg’s wild ideas.

During his testimony, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta even considered making a feed that consisted only of ads. Apparently, this is because users think these ads are as good as regular content. However, we’re skeptical of those claims.

It’s probably still too early to tell what the outcome of this trial will be. However, a report from The Wall Street Journal suggests that Zuckerberg is eager to settle. Zuckerberg reportedly called the head of the FTC in late March and offered to pay $450 million. He later bumped it up to $1 billion. The FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, declined. Instead, the report claims that Ferguson told Zuckerberg he wouldn’t settle for anything less than $18 billion but later upped it to $30 billion.