Facebook likes, comments and shares ‘down 20%’ following data scandals – but tech titan claims it’s doing better than ever
FACEBOOK usage like liking and commenting on posts has dropped significantly over the past year, according to new statistics.
However, the tech giant is insisting that other uses of the platform have continued to grow.
According to and the business analytics firm Mixpanel, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts, have dropped by 20% since news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in April 2018.
This was Facebook's biggest privacy scandal to date and the company had to admit that it had failed to protect its users and their data from being misused.
The decline has also come at the same time as a range of data, privacy and hate speech scandals for the social media platform, such as critics claiming that Facebook was fuelling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.
However, Facebook's own statistics claim the number of daily and monthly active users has actually increased from March 2018 to March 2019.
Market research firm, eMarketer, has also a decline in Facebook usage in the US.
The research company says the average American Facebook user spent 38 minutes a day on the site, which is down from 41 minutes in 2017.
The firm added: “On top of that, Facebook has continued to lose younger users, who are spreading their time and attention across other social platforms and digital activities."
We have reached out to Facebook for comment.
Facebook's biggest cyber-security mistakes
Here's some of the major times Facebook let us down...
- In 2007, Facebook's first targetted advertising product, Beacon, caused outrage because there was initally no opt-in option about the kinds of information users wanted to share
- In 2009, a Federal Trade Commission investigation was triggered because Facebook users complained that the new privacy tools were too confusing and pushed users to make more of their personal information public
- In 2010, it was revealed that advertisers were using a privacy loophole to retrieve revealing personal information about Facebook users and the company had to change its software
- In 2011, the FTC charged Facebook with lying to customers about how their information could be kept private but making it public anyway
- 2018 saw Facebook's biggest privacy scandal to date with reports that Cambridge Analytica misused user data and Facebook had to admit that it had failed to protect its users
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How often do you use Facebook? Let us know in the comments...
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