Facebook loses daily users for the first time ever

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Facebook reported its first-ever quarterly decline of global daily users and lower-than-expected ad growth at an earnings call on Wednesday. The news resulted in a massive stock drop that wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value. Its drop in daily users may be due to Facebook’s increasing lack of relevance with young people. Meta is still wildly profitable, making nearly $40 billion last year. It plans to release its next VR headset later this year.

On Wednesday, Facebook’s user base stopped growing. It even shrank in some markets. The news, combined with a forecast for less revenue growth than expected in the current quarter, shook the company and sent stock down as much as 24% in after-hours trading.

It’s a moment that Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has warned his employees about. Internet platforms and trends, he has explained, can fade as quickly(like myspace)  as they can grow. He fears that the network effect can just as easily work in the opposite direction, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing Zuckerberg’s private conversations.

No mention of the censorship issues plaguing the platform .

Free speech is not a human right, according to prominent Facebook censorship board member Helle Thorning-Schmidt. “What we’re trying to find, of course, I think many of us engaging in this conversation, is that middle road. How do you moderate content and how do you find that balance between human rights and free speech, which is a human right, but also other human rights because free speech is not an absolute human right,” the Facebook Oversight Board co-chair said during a live stream of Politico’s Tech 28 spotlight in July of 2021.