Facebook Users by Country 2024

Facebook is a US-based social media conglomerate corporation that was founded in 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Harvard University students, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew Mccollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. With about 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world. Facebook is also considered one of the "Big Five" technology companies alongside Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Facebook is also tremendously profitable, with 2020 profits of $32.6 billion USD from total revenue of $85.9 billion USD, most of which came from advertising.

Facebook’s additional products include image-based media sites Instagram and Giphy, messaging apps Messenger and WhatsApp, and VR headset developer Oculus. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, WhatsApp and Oculus in 2014, and Giphy in 2020—though a UK regulatory agency soon flagged the Giphy purchase as an anti-competitive move and ordered facebook to sell the company. Also in 2021, Facebook introduced a new overarching umbrella brand, Meta, which it bills as a "social technology" company.

10 Countries with the Highest Number of Facebook Users (2020-2021):

India has the highest number of Facebook users in any country in the world. This is, in part, due to India’s population of 1.4 billion people being the second-highest in the world behind China. If India’s Facebook users were to form a nation, it would be the fifth-most populated country globally. The United States has the second-highest number of users, with about 240 million. At a population of about 334 million, this means that more than 71% of people in the United States—nearly three out of every four people—are Facebook users. In fact, because Facebook requires users to be age 13 or older to open an account, the true rate of membership is likely even higher.

Facebook censorship around the world

Facebook has grown rapidly worldwide, with almost every country having Facebook users. The platform’s easy access enables people to connect and keep in touch from anywhere in the world more easily than they could before. In democracies, Facebook and other social media platforms help political campaigns, deliver news, organize movements and protests, and more. However, because Facebook accepts most content with little to no moderation, it occasionally finds itself criticized by national governments. In the U.S., Facebook has come under fire for enabling the spread of misinformation, such as during political campaigns and the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, countries address misinformation with a content ban. For instance, Austria has laws against denying the holocaust, so any posts that deny the holocaust are banned.

What's more, countries such as China, which exercise strict censorship over the internet, and countries with totalitarian regimes see Facebook's ability to spread information as a threat. Similarly, some countries ruled by strict religious fundamentalists view Facebook as a platform that enables blasphemy. Because of this, many countries have censored or limited access to portions of Facebook, and a few have banned it entirely.

Countries that have censored or banned Facebook: