Uncovered emails showed how Meta struggled to keep Facebook culturally relevant

With the first week of Meta Disbeliever trial Behind us, the documents shared by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have given Meta’s internal struggles to keep Facebook relevant. In the emails of the 202222, the meta executives spread different views for the success of the future of Facebook, acknowledging that its cultural relevance was decreasing.

Fast-forward in 2025, and Meta is still jumping on this problem. Mark Zuckerberg said when the company’s Q4 earned earnings in January that the company wants Restore the cultural relevance of Facebook This year with returning to “Oji Facebook”. The part of the solution to this problem is a recent introduction Rebuild the Friends tabThe

From April 2022, in multiple messages, which were divided as evidence during the trial, Zuckerberg discussed concerns about the old platform as old as “friendly” structure and format “the following” on Facebook.

He considered the issue of digging the format of friends and even advised Everyone’s Facebook friends are deleting And start them again.

Mark Zuckerberg’s emails are some highlights below.

Anxiety around Facebook to lose cultural relevance

• “I want to make sure that we have a unique vision for the FB application that can lead to sustainable development over time. Although the FB application is busy in many places, its cultural relevance is decreasing rapidly and I am concerned that if it is a top indicator of future health problems, then this company is good for us to do this, and this company is good for this company, if we want to do this. Won’t even see the way, “
• “My theory is to refresh our FB’s graph structure to achieve cultural relevance and better long -term paths”
• “I think we need to find a technique that does not allow a service scrap to pick up the other service back or artificially or irregularly righ itself

The “friendly” structure of Facebook is worrying to say old

• “The FB application is the owner of the concept of friendship, so if it has any way to refresh and make it as a more relevant part of life in the 2020s, it could be a good way.”
• “At least a few reasons should feel friendly at the moment. First, many people’s friends graphs are not full of listening to and who want to connect with them. Secondly, it is not difficult to request a new person or relate to them, but I don’t want to follow them first. Since FB does not seem culturally relevant, it adds more weight to add something to FB vs. other services. “
• “It feels to me that the location of the FB app in cultural relevance is deeply bound with the friend graph structure against other organizational policies, for example, IG/Twitter-style graphs, the pure algorithmic methods of Tiktok-style, group/reddit-style community, etc.”

Resolution

• “Every other modern social network is built in the following instead of friendship, so it seems possible that the FB app is just old because it never accepts this basic invention. The following is the way to correct it will be fully accepted. To prefer pages as well. “
• “A potential insane idea is to delete everyone’s graphs and to start them again. It is obviously risk that if we do it, lots of people will not only reinstate their graphs or be less appointed, so if we want to create a test it will test it in a small country and it will test it in a small country.