Mark Zuckerberg Once Considered Deleting Everyone's Facebook Friends (2025)

Anyone who likes to keep in touch with friends and family online likely has a Facebook account at this point. The famed Mark Zuckerberg launched the social media platform in February 2004 from his Harvard University dorm room, and now, it's one of the most powerful online platforms in the world.

If you've been on Facebook for years, you probably have a lot of friends on there. But, a new report reveals that Zuckerberg actually considered wiping out everyone's Facebook friends back in 2022.

As TechSpot reports in an April 15 piece, Zuckerberg was on the witness stand on April 14 to defend his company Meta against a case presented by the FTC in 2022.

"The agency alleges the company created a market-dominating monopoly when it bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, thereby violating US competition laws," TechSpot notes. "The FTC wants to break up Meta by spinning off one of these apps."

Fortune adds, "The FTC is seeking to unwind Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, but the company maintains it does not hold a monopoly power in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving digital marketplace."

During the hearing, it came out that Zuckerberg once had a "crazy idea" of "wiping everyone's friend connections," TechSpot states. That happened in 2022, when apps such as TikTok had become more popular with young people, leaving Facebook to perhaps look like a social media platform for older people.

According to TechSpot, "Zuckerberg proposed a radical solution in an internal email at the time, revealed by the government during the hearing. 'Option 1. Double down on Friending,' he wrote. 'One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again.'" They added that "graphs in this case refers to friend connections."

During the hearing, Zuckerberg said that Facebook never rolled out his idea for unfriending. That's good to hear, because a lot of people like to keep up with loved ones on Facebook's platform.