In the days after Meta said it was eliminating fact-checking and scaling back diversity programs, thousands of users reportedly voiced their intention to leave the company's platforms.
The data tells a different story.
Engagement on Meta's core platforms is similar now to what it was earlier this month before the company announced it would replace third-party fact-checkers with community notes and roll back its DEI initiatives. New data from multiple analytics firms shows that a slight decline in engagement following the policy changes was reversed after news of a TikTok ban, which prompted users to return to Mark Zuckerberg's platforms.
"The data — especially the number of daily active users (DAUs) — tells the story that usage started to fall after all the headlines came out about the changes Meta was making," Thomas Grant, vice president of research at market intelligence firm Apptopia, told Business Insider. "But then the news about the potential TikTok ban changed that trend and people started engaging with the [apps] more again."
Meta declined to comment when reached by BI.
Gen Z users support Meta doing away with fact-checking
Apptopia data found that Facebook's daily active users, which had been down about 2% year-over-year for most of January, began showing year-over-year growth on January 18, as speculation intensified ahead of a Supreme Court decision on TikTok.
Instagram saw an even stronger rebound, with DAUs rising on January 18 and continuing to grow above the previous year's numbers on both January 19 and 20.
"It seems like people did start leaving the app as all the headlines about changes in policies hit, but then that whole movement got swamped by the TikTok ban news," Grant said.
Leading up to the initial TikTok ban, Meta's Instagram Reels, its short-form video platform, was named as an alternative to TikTok by some users. "TikTok refugees" also flocked to RedNote, a China-based social media app.
Notably, a CivicScience survey of 1,346 Americans found that 36% of participants support Meta's move to kill fact-checking in favor of community notes, compared to 32% who oppose it (the remaining 32% were neutral). Support was particularly strong among Gen Z users between 18 to 24, with 53% backing the changes.
Meanwhile, download and revenue data from the market intelligence firm App Figures tells yet another story.
Meta's in-app purchase revenue is up
While US downloads for Meta's apps did decline slightly after the policy changes — Facebook downloads were down 8% and Instagram downloads were down 5% — the revenue that Meta earns from in-app purchases on Facebook and Instagram increased during the same period (Threads, Meta's X clone, does not offer in-app purchases yet).
"After looking at the download and revenue data for Meta's social apps, I was unable to detect any substantial or out-of-the-ordinary decline," Randy Nelson, the head of insights at App Figures, told BI. "In fact, in some cases there were increases," he said.
App Figures' comparison of the 13 days before and after Meta's announcement to end fact-checking shows that US in-app purchases on Meta's platforms grew to $1.9 million for Facebook and $3 million for Instagram, representing increases of 5% and 3%, respectively.
The company saw similar gains worldwide, with Facebook's in-app revenue reaching $5.2 million and Instagram's hitting $8.9 million. However, these figures, don't include Meta's primary revenue source: advertising.
Globally, the download numbers are favorable for Meta.
Instagram's worldwide downloads increased by 5% after the changes were announced, while Facebook saw a modest 1% uptick, according to App Figures.
More data from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reinforces these findings. The firm found that user activity across Meta's apps has remained steady since the policy changes.
Only Instagram saw a brief 1% weekly decrease in average DAUs immediately following the announcements but quickly recovered the following week, according to data shared with BI.
The bottom line? The recent policy changes haven't dented Meta's numbers. For now, the company's platforms, used by more than 3 billion people around the world, remain as entrenched as ever.
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