They deliver more ads today than they have at any point in their history. That's a function of active users, and of their UX. The instagram/fb experience of today is not anything like it was 5 years ago -- there are a lot more ads.

At the same time, more people are "using" their family of apps in one way or another on a daily or monthly basis. These metrics entail all kinds of flaws, but ads delivered and ad impressions are the metric that explain the phenomenon you describe, more than net-new users.

That being said, yes, international expansion is a big deal for how they grow the "user" count metrics.

Instagram is an app and therefore can't have its ads (easily) blocked. Facebook is mostly used by older people that don't know about ad blockers.

Facebook is an app too

And almost all of the revenue for it comes from mobile users.

Is this why Reddit pushes people to its app?

Yes but also tracking.

What kind of tracking can be done in apps that can't be done in browsers?

If you ever download or upload a picture in the app, you’ve likely granted full access to your photo library, which includes location information on every photo along with timestamps.

Also just direct location access, even when it’s running in the background.

What orientation the phone is in (are you laying in bed?) and is it moving?

Then of course more specific metrics within the platform around how long you looked at a post, how fast do you scroll here, how much do you read certain comments compared to others, etc. Those platform metrics are a lot easier to track when you have full hardware access instead of just the apis that mobile javascript provides

Does the app also get to see all the photos in the photo library or just metadata?

You don't know anyone on Instagram? That seems very unlikely. And yes, the United States only supplies a quarter of a billion of Facebook's/Instagram's three billion users.

you are not the average american

Always remember that the US is like 4% of the world population.

Their profit margin on international users is way, way lower than US and Canada.

That will change as the world gains parity.

You realize that this is the bullish take?

Because you don’t know everyone.

What I've come to realize is that everyone likes to say they stopped using it, but the reality is that they actually do still use FB. They just aren't as active posting their own updates. But they are engaging in the platform, comments, etc. FBs got a long way to go before the golden goose is actually at risk.

Younger people not using FB though seems pretty real.

> What I've come to realize is that everyone likes to say they stopped using it, but the reality is that they actually do still use FB. They just aren't as active posting their own updates.

You could be right, but I think it’s more so that our specific circles may actually have stopped using it while most folks, in general, remain users.

> Younger people not using FB though seems pretty real.

We've already gone through one cycle of "young people are abandoning Facebook" with millenials and Snapchat. And it turned out that the thesis of Snapchat as FB killer was widely overblown. Snapchat failed to really expand into other demos the way early Facebook did, not to mention a lot of those Millenials aged out of it and migrated to Instagram.

Now we're hearing the same story but with Gen Z and TikTok. But it's hard to see a compelling reason why TikTok will wind up a different story. Seems very unlikely that my kids pre-school will eventually wind up uploading to TikTok the way they do Facebook.

My guess is the youth vanguard will always use whatever the new hotness is in alternative social media platform, because keeping grownups out is the point. But Facebook (and Instagram) seem like they're firmly entrenched as the base layer of civil society.

They showed 17% more ads this quarter than last years 4Q. Reports of facebooks death are greatly exaggerated.

They showed approximately the same number of users an increased number of ads, and those ads were worth approximately the same amount less.

Tells me they are locked in a spiral of an increasingly awful user experience.

You'll note that revenue from advertising fell 1%

A lot of people may have stopped using Facebook.

But what about Instagram? WhatsApp? Oculus?

I'm seeing far more ads on instagram reels.

What is it, exactly, that makes you think that "everyone you know" is in any way representative of the general population?