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Facebook to survive current scandal but not declining interest among young users - experts

Social media consultant Matt Navarra noted that The Facebook Files and insights from whistleblower Frances Haugen herself at best show Facebook as being lost and confused

NEW YORK, October 26. /TASS/. A real threat to Facebook may not be a new series of revelations but the declining interest to the social network among young people which led to the current scandal, a number of experts said on Monday commenting on the situation around Facebook.

"Facebook's survived every scandal, and even flourished afterward. But declining interest among young users, along with Apple's attack on its ad system, are significant threats to the company right now," Alex Kantrowitz, CNBC’s expert on mass media, the author of the book entitled Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever, wrote on Twitter. He noted that the stock market on Monday almost didn’t react to the new series of insights about the company.

A similar opinion was expressed by Saagar Enjeti of the Realignment popular conservative podcast: "The only FB story that really matters is their internal data showing it's mostly a boomer product fading in relevancy. Yet it dominates national/politico conversation of tech. The future is not FB, even they will tell you so," he noted in his podcast.

Social media consultant Matt Navarra noted that "The Facebook Files and insights from whistleblower Frances Haugen herself at best show Facebook as being lost and confused. - At their worst, the files and testimony, show Facebook as deceitful and out of control." "The current plans for social media regulation will help reign in Facebook and others (a little)," he noted on Twitter.

A significant part of Facebook documents which became available to the media is dedicated to the fact that the social network is rapidly losing its audience among young people who prefer competing products, above all, TikTok. Facebook attempted to overcome this trend trying to attract young people to its platforms by questionable means, for example, advising anorexic teenagers on the new ways of weight loss and not filtering radical content if it was interesting to the users.

On Monday, a number of media outlets worldwide published a new series of investigations into problems at Facebook. According to the Associated Press, 17 US media outlets participated in compiling The Facebook Papers. The journalists worked jointly studying thousands of pages of the US company’s documents which were provided by Frances Haugen, Facebook’s former employee.