[horseLOGIC]

I can see why people are desperate to "prove" that the supposed election meddling or the Cambridge Analytica scandal is causing Facebook to fail, but the data just doesn't show that at all.

People make a big deal about privacy, but the actual users of social media usually post stuff because they want everyone to know about it. The people who really care about privacy are not on social media. There's already a general understanding that when using the internet, you're getting tracked by various actors and people (even begrudgingly) accept that.

That same graph shows that Facebook usage has been dropping virtually every month before the election and after, totaling almost 50% loss. There's no exceptional change visible due to any particular event. There are some strong upticks in there as well, but the longterm trend is down.

I believe the most reasonable explanation is simply that people are moving on, just like they moved on from MySpace and other previously popular platforms. Young people are leading the charge here, it's just not as comfortable when your grandmother and high school teacher can see you on Facebook. It's uncool.

[yorwba]

> users of social media usually post stuff because they want everyone to know about it

> it's just not as comfortable when your grandmother and high school teacher can see you on Facebook

I think most posts on social media are targeted at people in the poster's peer group, and the only reason that everyone else can see them too is that broadcasting is the default way to contact multiple people without prior coordination (say, by joining a group chat).

[horseLOGIC]

I don't actually use Facebook, but I'm under the impression that you can post to just the people who are your friends or just a set of friends. There's certainly the possibility to at least not broadcast to the whole internet.