Meta’s monopoly made it a fair weather friend

Mark Zuckerberg stood up this week Antitrust Test As a result, the social networking empire of Meta could be dissolved. It may be a few years ago when nearly 3 billion users of the company’s flagship app Facebook were internally known as the blue app. Obituary. (For the record, Tom Allison, who led the service two years ago; A statement has been issued “Facebook is not even dead.”) but with all the hubbubs surrounding the trial, Facebook users may have missed the most important news about Blue over the years. March 27, 2025, the 21-year-old company quietly New features announced With that mobile app: options to provide users with innovative experiences I’m watching my friends’ content on Facebook. Finally, there was a newsfeed alternative that was overwhelming with trash, gossip and influencer videos. By finding and selecting the Friends tab, the feed is a choice to connect with only posts from people you know in real life. You might even call it a social app. Imagine it!

The company’s explanation is said. “Over the years, Facebook has evolved to meet changing needs…” reads the press release. “But my friend’s magic has left,” I marvel at the passive voice. The meta rating is over 1 trillion. It linked almost half of humanity. All of this is for the power of people who want to keep up with their friends and family. And somehow, did the company’s core purpose of connecting friends simply leave? Thousands of engineers, designers, marketers and managers working on Facebook have one day woke up and said, “Hey, have you ever seen something like that? The very reason we are a company? ”

No, this didn’t just happen. In a 2023 press release that Facebook is not dead, Allison listed app priorities for that year, including “artificial intelligence, messaging, creators, and monetization.” It’s not about meta-executives pushing friend content, even though people wanted to see exactly that. It was revealed in court that Zuckerberg had known for years that his users longed to hear more from friends. In a 2020 META survey, 61% of users wanted more friends posts, while 66% wanted to see a wider variety of posts among friends. A year later, another survey reported that three of Facebook’s top four “problems” came from what the Federal Trade Commission called “reducing investments in sharing friends and family.”

This is one explanation. Content from influencers, political activists and fake news organizations is more profitable and keeps people on the way longer. Misinformation from strangers is more valuable to Meta than family updates or travel photos from friends. They don’t usually go viral. So when Allison wrote about AI, he didn’t mean to use it to find out what your friends were saying, but with the help of Facebook monetization, it means connecting you with the creators who post to boost their wallet. Stand, Zuckerberg Another explanation was provided Due to the change, people started sharing on messaging apps rather than social platforms. But perhaps the reason they stopped sharing on Facebook was because all of these toxic posts from strangers made the platform uncomfortable?

Zuckerberg was slippery when he admitted he had bought Instagram and WhatsApp to eliminate competition. This is an important issue in court. However, he was honest in admitting that the company’s mission had changed dramatically from the original, pleasant crusaders to connect people. He is now as much an entertainment company as social networks. The charts shared by Meta showed entertainment overwhelmed social content. In 2025, Facebook users only spent 17% of their time considering content being shared by friends. That’s not because they like to read things from influencers and angry boosters. But Zuckerberg said when it comes to friend’s content, “that part of what we’re doing is not really growing.” Again, passive voice!

Given that hunger has to look at friend posts, you might expect Meta’s talented workforce skills to be adopted to maximize the value of human connection. For years it was. In the early 2010s, I frequently called the Zuckerberg meeting room, Aquarium, and I saw an interesting project intended to enhance the value of social networks. Some of these projects didn’t work Graph search? – But they were an honest attempt to fulfill the company’s mission. As the decade went on, the social aspects of Facebook have become less of a priority for Zuckerberg, and his passion has shifted to virtual reality and artificial intelligence.