Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a “potentially crazy idea” to help boost Facebook usage: erasing every users’ “friends” on the platform, hoping it would lead to them spending more time on Facebook, adding their deleted friends back.
That strategy was floated by Zuckerberg in 2022, according to an internal email shared by the Federal Trade Commission on Monday in its antitrust lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg suggested “wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again,” in an effort to increase Facebook engagement.
Facebook, of course, ultimately did not follow through with that idea. The email showed that Zuckerberg was willing to consider creative — or in his own words, “potentially crazy” — strategies to increase engagement on Facebook, the linchpin of his company’s $1.4 trillion business.
The average Facebook user in the U.S., as TheWrap reported last week, uses the app for 63 minutes per day on average, while the average Instagram user is on the app for 48 minutes per day. Combined, the pair narrowly edge past TikTok, where American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day scrolling and creating videos.
In an antitrust trial that has been years in the making, Meta headed to court on Monday to face the FTC’s accusations it illegally built a social media monopoly by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago.
The trial, held in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, poses a significant threat to the tech juggernaut Zuckerberg has built. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in 2004, has created a social media empire that has stamped out competitors and violated antitrust law, the FTC has argued, due to its $1 billion purchase of Instagram in 2012 and its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014.
“Since at least 2012, Meta has enjoyed monopoly power in that market,” the FTC said in a court filing last year. “The Commission further contends that the Defendant unlawfully maintained that monopoly by acquiring two actual or nascent competitors, Instagram and WhatsApp, that posed a threat to its dominance at the time.”
Meta has fought back against the FTC’s antitrust claims, which the company said are “weak” in a blog post from Jennifer Newstead, its chief legal officer, on Sunday. Newstead argued that the FTC’s lawsuit is bogus because it conveniently ignores how Meta faces stiff competition for users’ time from platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
Zuckerberg made the same argument on Monday in court, saying “we compete vigorously” with TikTok and YouTube. The 40-year-old CEO took the stand for the second straight day on Tuesday, where he was peppered with questions on old emails he had sent about acquiring other tech companies.
Speaking about Instagram and Path in 2012, Zuckerberg said in an email their “businesses are nascent but the networks are established, the brands are already meaningful and if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us.” That email comment was posted to X by Matthew Stoller, the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, while he is inside the courtroom.
Meta’s stock was down about half a percentage point by midday Tuesday, and is down 11.6% on the year.
