I'm leaving open the idea that he's being honest and that FB was under serious pressure from the Washington establishment and didn't really want to censor as much as they did.
Fair. On the other hand, let’s not forget also that Facebook itself before even becoming an entity under the umbrella of Meta, and before having noticeable pressure from Washington whenever that really began, had serious privacy issues from the get-go. I remember even Steve Jobs who wasn’t a saint and most likely a narcissist, confronted Zuckerberg because of this back then around 2008 and 09, when Facebook wanted Apple to use their APIs on the iPhones. And Apple held and still hold a lot of users data themselves. And the weird and cringy way Mark acted when asked about those things directly.
Yes, privacy is a separated problem not related to free speech directly, but I do think that at the end of the day, it has to do with business, privacy alone was ok as Facebook main issue, but when it comes to free speech, it can affect the company to have those 2 problems tagged to their name:
- Facebook generated $134.9 billion revenue in 2023. Approximately $71 billion came from the Facebook app
- $61.2 billion of Facebook’s revenue is generated in US & Canada, despite only 8.9% of users being based in that region
Data:
Facebook Revenue and Usage Statistics (2024)
Active users through the years:
Active users (billions) per year:
| Year | Users |
| 2024 | 3.07 billion |
| 2023 | 3.07 billion |
| 2022 | 2.96 billion |
| 2021 | 2.91 billion |
| 2020 | 2.80 billion |
| 2019 | 2.50 billion |
| 2018 | 2.32 billion |
| 2017 | 2.13 billion |
| 2016 | 1.86 billion |
| 2015 | 1.59 billion |
| 2014 | 1.39 billion |
So if continues that way, the active user numbers might not growth significantly and it could hit a line where it maybe stay as it is, or even decrease a bit if other platforms gain more users.
Comparing that to X:
| from 2017 projected to 2028 (Users in billions) |
| 28= 6.05 |
| 27= 5.85 |
| 26= 5.65 |
| 25= 5.42 |
| 24= 5.17 |
| 23= 4.9 |
| 22= 4.59 |
| 21= 4.26 |
| 20= 3.91 |
| 19= 3.51 |
| 18= 3.1 |
| 17 = 2.73 |
Where statistics shown and estimation of growth. Taking as well into consideration the plans of Elon and X to begin using videos like youtube type as feature, competing with YouTube and Google at some point in the future. and monetization to create and make X as payment platform. Elon always loved the Asian method of some apps like Line or Webo where all things are added and controlled into one app. A dream for Meta. (My assumption but could be a valid one)
Coming back to the numbers, yes, those numbers are minimal compared to Meta numbers (FB and IG combined) but it could also show a reason of why these plan changes from Facebook (looking at the active users from 2023 to 2024). Plus now that Trump will be in power, Facebook can be confronted by serious investigations, I suspect the reason of Facebook being more “open” and making these changes was also decided after Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago. So it could be also another type of pressure not coming from Washington but from a different side. Deep state will continue to control these social media and privacy wise would be always a present issue, but as for free speech, I don’t see it genuinely coming from Zuckerberg’s purely intentions.
Saying that, I really wish to be wrong, and take Z’s honesty as real. But it’s a bit difficult to see it.
