this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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I read "it's dying" by people on Discord and Reddit all the time, but the numbers prove otherwise. It's been going up this entire time and sitting over 3 billion MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS!

I feel like the bubble around people on other platforms saying "who uses Facebook anymore lol" is kind of wild given the numbers. Keep in mind these are active users not just abandoned accounts.

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[–] NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 42 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Facebook was extremely aggressive in getting their software preloaded on all hardware sold in developing areas over the last 20 years. So countries like India (with one and a half billion people by itself) have a large segment of users that think Facebook is the internet. It's Zucks ultimate walled garden.

3 billion of those people likely access Facebook for everything that we think of as online. Commerce, social networking, music, videos, it's all on Facebook.

[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just like how people thought AOL was the Internet 20 years back.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

Exactly. We've come full-circle. The likes of AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve were practically eradicated by the open internet, and it's taken 30+ years to get even close to clawing it back into some kind of walled garden. But it looks like they're making progress.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I remember that, about a decade ago, Facebook including free access to their services on cell phones in India; there was concern and pushback about creating this walled garden monopoly, obviously to no avail.
My guess is that is why many memes from India from back then involved screenshots of the older generations using Whatsapp as a sort of social network, the subcontinent's own version of "ok boomer" humor.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

The free access to Facebook scheme was killed due to protests, and we now have a net neutrality principle. The workaround FB found was to get smartphone manufacturers to include Facebook as a pre-installed app. And now the government is cracking down on pre-installed apps, so I don't know what they'll do next.

large segment of users that think Facebook is the internet.

This really hurt to read somehow. I mean you're right, but it's still shit.

[–] spiderman@ani.social 1 points 8 months ago

So countries like India (with one and a half billion people by itself)

Also old people use Facebook a lot here. It was their first social media and they have settled on that. There are some set of people who are switching to Instagram day by day but the rate isn't any threat to Facebook.

[–] suomisepp@feddit.de 1 points 8 months ago

This the right answer.