Defying all critics saying Facebook is nothing but a hotbed for misinformation, data abuse and hate speech, the company finished the year off strongly, beating analyst expectations across the board in its fourth-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The company netted $16.91 billion in revenue in the three months ending December 31, beating its previous record by more than $3 billion.

And while Facebook’s user base certainly isn’t growing as quickly as it used to, there are no signs of a “mass exodus” that many experts had predicted after last year’s scandals surrounding Cambridge Analytica, Russian bots etc. The world’s largest social network now has 2.32 billion monthly active users, of which a stable two thirds, or 1.52 billion people, access the platform every day.

The latest jump in revenue can mainly be attributed to the fact that the company generates more and more revenue per user. In the past quarter, global average revenue per user amounted to $7.37, which is more than five times the per-user haul of the same period in 2011. There is a limit to how much money Facebook can squeeze out of its users however and during yesterday’s earnings call, the company’s CFO David Wehner warned that ad revenue will probably grow slower throughout 2019 as people’s news feeds are already at their limit in terms of ad load and usage is shifting towards stories, which aren’t monetized as effectively yet.

source: statista