Facebook continues to grow despite scandals and outrage at privacy

The past year, Facebook has been filled with consecutive privacy scandals and seemingly inexhaustible bad news, but you would not know if you check out the company's score sheet. Facebook's results report for Q4 2018 is released and the social media giant has exceeded revenue expectations and has seen increased growth in the number of users.

In December 2018, more than 1.52 billion people used Facebook every day, an increase of 9% over the previous year. Monthly active users also increased by 9% over the previous year, with 2.32 billion euros at December 31st.

These figures are up 1.8% from the previous quarter, reflecting a three-month improvement, which saw a slight decline in US and European usage. This quarter's growth is certainly not the best of Facebook, but it is a return to the usual upward trend of the company after signs that it began to weaken.

All this despite a 2018 year full of privacy issues and high-profile security for Facebook. Among its many problems is the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a data breach in which hackers stole login credentials for 50 million people, and accusations that it would have contributed to the spread of hate speech in Myanmar.

This quarter, Facebook saw the number of users increase in Europe and the United States, regions where the numbers were stable or declining last quarter. Facebook also announced that a new peak of 2.7 billion people was using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger each month, with 2 billion people using at least one of these four services once a day.

This is not entirely good news: as Jack Nicas noted on TwitterFacebook has also realized that counterfeit and duplicate accounts are also on the rise, with 116 million counterfeit accounts and 255 million duplicate accounts on the site.

Image: Facebook

From a financial point of view, things look good and sunny: revenues have fallen $ 16.91 billion for the quarter, exceeding badysts' estimates, and earnings per share of $ 2.38 per share, also well above estimates. The company's shares also jumped more than 6% as a result of this announcement.

In other words, regardless of how the public perceives Facebook as a business, it seems that Facebook itself is doing better than ever, no matter how you calculate the numbers.