What scandal? Facebook usage actually increased after Cambridge Analytica

Despite a very vocal Twitter movement to #DeleteFacebook, new findings from investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs have revealed that the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which saw the private information of up to 87 million Facebook users harvested and used to influence the 2016 US Election, had very little impact on the social network's traffic.

As reported by Business Insider, usage actually increased during its most difficult and scrutinized period, with the firm citing comScore numbers that point to a 7% year-on-year rise in mobile traffic from unique users in the US this past April, bringing the total to 188.6 million American users.

Growing user numbers aren't the only thing Facebook has to sing about — time spent on the app has also seen an increase, as you can see from the comScore graph below. 

Everything's coming up Zuckerberg

Citing its own advertising system checks, Deutsche Bank has also revealed that Facebook's mass-purging of over 583 million fake accounts has shown “little to no impact on audience reach” across the network. 

In a statement on the matter, Deutsche Bank said, “We note that this data represents audience reach across properties, not strictly tied to core Facebook, but we suspect they are cleaning up fake accounts across the board and view this as a broad indication that ad reach across Facebook continues to grow.”

Along with the numbers cited above, Facebook's share price has also seen a full recovery post scandal, with shares trading at $182.68 at the time of writing. 

Stephen Lambrechts
Senior Journalist, Phones and Entertainment

Stephen primarily covers phones and entertainment for TechRadar's Australian team, and has written professionally across the categories of tech, film, television and gaming in both print and online for over a decade. He's obsessed with smartphones, televisions, consoles and gaming PCs, and has a deep-seated desire to consume all forms of media at the highest quality possible. 


He's also likely to talk a person’s ear off at the mere mention of Android, cats, retro sneaker releases, travelling and physical media, such as vinyl and boutique Blu-ray releases. Right now, he's most excited about QD-OLED technology, The Batman and Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga.