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A comment on Facebook loses users for the first time. Parent comment

Re:Facebook loses users for the first time by TheOtherHobbes on Thursday February 03, 2022 @09:35AM (#30192902)
Facebook was never ever about the Social Graph. It was always about user profiling and activity/interest monitoring which could be sold to advertisers. The Social Graph was just one tool for that.

Coincidentally the profiling is also extremely useful for political leverage and behaviour mod. I'm sure that never occurred to anyone around the company, and the links to operations like AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica are incidental among the ad noise.

The incoming anti-trust cases are going to be interesting.

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Re:Facebook loses users for the first time by jmacd on Thursday February 03, 2022 @09:46AM (#30193067)
That is right in terms of the business. For the consumer though, the Social Graph did (and does) have real utility. It just has zero business value now as it isn't even useful for the retargeting data.
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Re:Facebook loses users for the first time by w_t_payne on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:17AM (#30193493)
Election years are big money years for the entire Ad industry. Political advertising is not something that a sane Advertising company will ignore.
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Re:Facebook loses users for the first time by redisman on Thursday February 03, 2022 @11:30AM (#30194511)
Facebook has basically been a magical money printing machine for political fundraising. Put a dollar in with a nice outrageous ad and get two back in donations.
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