Facebook growth slows in aftermath of privacy scandals
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17614518/facebook-q2-2018-earnings-cambridge-analytica-scandal-growth-stalling
For years, Facebook has enjoyed astronomical growth, but that’s starting to slow as the company’s moderation controversies and data privacy scandals continue to pile up. Facebook posted earnings for the second quarter of 2018 today, with revenue and user growth coming in under Wall Street estimates. It’s the first time the company’s quarterly sales did not exceed expectations in roughly three years.
Facebook’s numbers were still wildly impressive for the quarter: it saw 42 percent year-over-year growth in ad revenue and 11 percent year-over-year growth in monthly and daily active users. (The social network now counts 1.47 billion daily active users and 2.23 billion monthly ones.) But this is still the slowest quarterly user growth Facebook has seen since 2011, and the company has pretty much stopped growing entirely in the US and Canada, its most lucrative markets, according to Recode. The revenue miss also seems to illustrate that the social network and its massive online advertising empire is not, in fact, impervious to bad headlines and an ever-changing and inconsistent approach to policing its platform.