This week, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in an antitrust trial that might consequence within the breakup of Meta’s social networking empire. It is likely to be years earlier than the practically 3 billion customers of the corporate’s flagship app Fb—identified internally because the Blue app—be taught the destiny of the service they nonetheless use, regardless of the fixed obituaries. (For the report, two years in the past, Tom Alison, who heads the service, issued a press release affirming “Fb just isn’t lifeless nor dying.”) However with all of the hubbub surrounding the trial, Fb customers may need missed essentially the most vital information about Blue in years. On March 27, 2025, the 21-year-old firm quietly introduced a brand new function on its cell app: an choice that might give customers the novel expertise of seeing their associates’ content material on Fb. Lastly, there was a substitute for a information feed overwhelmed with rubbish, gossip, and influencer movies that individuals don’t essentially ask for however can’t resist clicking on after which feeling dangerous about. By finding and choosing the Buddies tab, your feed will populate solely with posts from individuals in actual life and that you’ve chosen to attach with. You may even name it a social app. Think about!
The corporate’s rationalization is telling. “Through the years, Fb developed to fulfill altering wants…” learn the press launch, “however the magic of associates has fallen away.” I marvel on the passive voice. Meta’s valuation is over a trillion. It has related practically half of humanity—all due to the facility of individuals wanting to maintain up with family and friends. And someway, the corporate’s core objective of connecting associates simply … fell away? Did the hundreds of engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, and managers engaged on Fb simply wake someday and say, “Hey, has anybody seen the stuff that’s the very cause we’re an organization?”
No, this didn’t simply occur. Take into account that, in that 2023 press launch about Fb not being lifeless, Alison listed the priorities for the app that yr, together with “synthetic intelligence, messaging, creators and monetization.” Not a phrase about boosting pal content material, regardless that Meta executives knew that individuals needed to see simply that. It got here out in courtroom that for years Zuckerberg has been conscious that his customers crave listening to extra from their associates. A Meta survey in 2020 discovered that 61 % of customers needed extra pal posts, and 66 % needed to see a wider range of posts amongst their associates. A yr later, one other survey reported that three out of the highest 4 “ache factors” on Fb have been attributable to what the Federal Commerce Fee referred to as “decreased funding in family and friends sharing.”
Right here’s one rationalization for this. Content material from influencers, political activists, and fake information organizations is extra worthwhile and retains individuals on the service longer. Misinformation from a stranger is price extra to Meta than household updates and journey images from associates. These don’t often go viral. That’s why, when Alison wrote about AI, he didn’t imply utilizing it to search out what your mates are saying however to attach you with creators who’re posting to spice up their very own wallets, with the assistance of Fb monetization. On the stand, Zuckerberg provided a unique rationalization for the change: Folks started sharing on messaging apps as a substitute of social platforms. However might or not it’s that the rationale that they stopped sharing on Fb was that each one these poisonous posts from strangers made the platform disagreeable?
Zuckerberg was slippery when it got here to admitting that he purchased Instagram and WhatsApp to get rid of competitors—a key concern within the trial. However he was frank in acknowledging that the mission of the corporate has veered dramatically from the unique feel-good campaign to attach people. It’s now as a lot an leisure firm as a social community, he says. A chart shared by Meta confirmed that leisure had overwhelmed social content material. In 2025, Fb customers spent solely 17 % of their time content material shared from associates. That’s not as a result of they like to learn stuff from influencers and anger-boosters—keep in mind, Meta’s personal surveys present that customers are dying to see stuff from individuals they know. But Zuckerberg matter-of-factly famous that with regards to pal content material, “That a part of what we do hasn’t actually grown.” Once more, the passive voice!
Given the starvation individuals need to see pal posts, one may count on that the talents of Meta’s gifted workforce can be employed to maximise the worth of human connections. For a few years, it was. Within the early 2010s, I used to be continuously referred to as to Mark Zuckerberg’s convention room, dubbed the Aquarium, to see some attention-grabbing undertaking meant to extend the worth of the social community. A few of these tasks didn’t work out—keep in mind graph search?—however they have been trustworthy makes an attempt at fulfilling the corporate mission. As the last decade progressed, the social side of Fb turned much less of a precedence for Zuckerberg, and his ardour shifted to digital actuality and synthetic intelligence.
