Why Mark Zuckerberg considered ‘deleting’ everyone’s Facebook friend list

In a startling revelation from internal emails presented during an ongoing antitrust trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s radical suggestion to “wipe everyone’s graphs” on Facebook has resurfaced, drawing attention to the extreme lengths leadership once considered to reinvigorate the platform’s relevance. The proposal, which involved erasing every user’s friend list to force a social re-engagement reset, offers a rare glimpse into the executive-level desperation to maintain Facebook’s user interest in an era increasingly dominated by competitors like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Although the idea was ultimately dismissed, the now-public emails have fueled renewed scrutiny of Facebook’s growth tactics and its dependence on legacy social structures—especially as Meta continues facing legal and reputational challenges around monopolistic behavior.