Did you know Can Facebook’s Community Moderation Strategy Reverse Declining Downloads and Attract Users Amid TikTok’s Potential US Ban?

 

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, recently announced that Facebook is introducing community moderation of posts, just like X’s community notes. Previously, Facebook used to do in-house handling for moderating posts on the platform. Many people are assuming that the reason for this is political, and it may be somewhat correct, but Facebook is doing all of this because of decreasing demand and low user engagement. We all know that demand for Facebook has decreased and it has lost millions of users in previous years.

According to the estimates by Appfigures, Facebook saw 601 million new downloads in 2017 which was an impressive number. Then in 2018, the downloads increased and touched 630 million. After 2018, the number of downloads started decreasing a bit but 2021 was the year when Facebook was never the same. In the year 2021, Facebook’s downloads dropped to 488 million. Facebook lost what most apps cannot even dream about achieving in their lifetime. Downloads dropped even lower in 2023 at 400 million.

So, this just shows that Facebook has lost millions of new users in just a few years and now there are a lot of people who aren't going to see ads on the platform. Even though Facebook’s downloads were dropping in the previous years, 2024 saw some rise in new downloads as the platform gets 513 million installs. So Facebook adding community-powered moderation practices may seem like a political move to some, but it is also a move to protect the app from any more growth decline. Now that TikTok is on the verge of getting banned in the US, some users might come to Facebook too.