According to a Business Insider report, the #DeleteFacebook movement hasn’t produced any substantial intended effects. Instead, we’re seeing quite the contrary, as the amount of unique U.S. users on mobile have steadily increased by a solid seven percent to 188.6 million in April.
It’s important to note that the last two months were inarguably the most vulnerable period in the company’s history, as the Cambridge Analytica data scandal was at its most potent and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying in Congress on Facebook’s potential involvement on the matter.
Goldman Sachs, which used ComScore to arrive at these numbers, also claimed that time spent on Facebook increased, as well. Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, stated that the social media platform’s recent removal of 583 million fake accounts had “little to no impact on audience reach” for the bank’s advertising system checks. Again, quite the opposite—its targeted advertising had actually increased, across all demographics.
“We note that this data represents audience reach across properties, not strictly tied to core Facebook, but we suspect they are cleaning up fake accounts across the board and view this as a broad indication that ad reach across Facebook continues to grow,” said Deutsche Bank.
In case you’ve somehow managed to avoid the Cambridge Analytica scandal—which affected 87 million Facebook users and was exposed by whistleblower Christopher Wylie in March—the social media giant has been under immense public scrutiny and political investigation, all which was assumed to significantly damage the company’s reputation and negatively affect its user base. As it stands, that clearly doesn’t seem to be the case.
Most recently, Facebook suspended roughly 200 apps and closed 583 million accounts as part of its renewed investigation and effort to clean up the site. Mark Zuckerberg will reportedly be discussing his breach of privacy and potential election interference with the Conference of Presidents on Tuesday—a group comprised of European Parliament members and the EU President.
