Facebook’s Survival Dilemma

Facebook is the most vulnerable of all Big Tech companies. What does it take to survive?

The following is a selection from Big Technology, a newsletter by Alex Kantrowitz. To get it in your inbox each week, you can sign up here.

Of the many sentences the Wall Street Journal published about Facebook this week, one stood out: “The fear was that eventually users might stop using Facebook altogether.”

Facebook’s executives, according to the Journal’s document-based reporting, feared the service’s decline in 2017 — and for good reason. Comments, likes, reshares, and original posts were all falling that year. Without this activity, Facebook would be a shell, and people might stop coming back. The executives needed to do something.

Their answer was to shift Facebook’s News Feed algorithm to prioritize “meaningful social interactions.” Instead of optimizing for time spent on Facebook (i.e., showing plenty of videos), they’d push posts that sparked discussion to the top of the feed. This could keep users engaged and — importantly — coming back. Facebook spun the changes as an attempt to improve well-being, leaving out the business motivations.

The new algorithm worked, sort of. Though the number of people using Facebook each day increased and…