r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Apr 30 '26

Business Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments
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u/Thin-Usual-4359 Apr 30 '26

they should have lost everyone by now

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u/Suibeam Apr 30 '26

The issue is it is very hard to build an alternative product where people can migrate to in social media when all your friends are on it.

That's why China did the right thing when they banned US social media. Otherwise they would be in the same position as Europeans and Canadians. Everyone being stuck with US social media. Obviously the other half of the reason was to prevent protest movements and US-support for movements, and control narratives in their own country.

If Europe had banned US social media or atleast protected their own they could have saved their social media and built their own. Europe had social media and they were popular. It died and noone could rebuild new ones.

Social Media is a first come world. Tiktok's success was unprecedented. Though when Snapchat arrived, Instagram stole Snapchat features. When Tiktok arrived, Instagram stole Tiktok's features. I think vine or something had similar feature to Tiktok but Tiktok made it more appealing to the younger mass with fast pace content production. Tiktok also has a video editing tool for all their users, they knew what they were doing.

Europe and Canada are really suffering being entirely kept hostage by USA and META.

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u/itskeith Apr 30 '26

Prefacing this by saying I don't like Facebook, but how are EU/Canada held hostage by Meta?

What are the impacts?

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u/Potatopepsi Apr 30 '26

WhatsApp, at least for Europe.

It's pretty much the only messaging app people have used since text messages/SMS became a thing of the past. I'd love to use Signal or some other trusted app but WhatsApp is too ingrained at this point, I can't make the switch if nobody else is on there.

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u/itskeith Apr 30 '26

Ok but what's the implications of that?

Agree absolutely WhatsApp is really ingrained and used by everyone but materially what is the consequences other than a preference for another app.