Thumbs down: 640,000 Dutch desert Facebook within a year
The number of people in the Netherlands using Facebook had fallen by 640,000 at the beginning of January 2019, compared with a year ago.
But other social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and LinkedIn all grew in popularity, as did YouTube, according to the latest National Social Media Research report. Some 7,000 people over the age of 15 took part in the survey.
WhatsApp has the most users in the Netherlands – some 11.9 million people now use the instant messaging service, up 3% on a year ago. But the biggest percentage rise was booked by Instagram – up 20% to 4.9 million.
Of the 640,000 people who have abandoned Facebook, 200,000 have actually given up their accounts. The rest have simply stopped posting.
The most common reasons given were a lack of trust in the platform, fake news and Facebook’s new privacy policy, research group Newcom said.
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