Since its inception in 2004, Facebook's vision of growing its user base has been going steady, despite all the scandals, backlash, US Senate hearings, and regulatory pressure.

But on 3 February, Meta – what the company is now known as – reported a half a million decline globally in its daily user base, a first in the social media giant's 18-year history.

You may think that a half a million drop is negligible when compared to Meta's existing user base, but it nevertheless wreaked havoc in the stock market, with investors fleeing after taking a peek at Meta's quarterly earnings report.

The dip in users, combined with the earnings report, plunged Meta's stock by nearly 26 percent, instantly shaving $250 billion dollars off its market value and $29 billion off Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.

And if you can't compute this fall, imagine the fall of two IBMs, two General Electrics, or McDonald's! This was the single largest one-day dollar drop for a US company in history!

Meta listed out several reasons for the drop - from Apple's new privacy rules to the increase in competition from TikTok. But the fundamental questions that I will try to address in today's episode are: Is Facebook having its 'MySpace' moment? Has it reached its peak? What led to this fall?

To help me unpack this, I speak to Udbhav Tiwari, a policy advisor at Mozilla. Tune in!


Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram

Editor: Shorbori Purkayastha, Nitish Rampal

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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