Facebook says that traffic has spiked amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and that it is struggling to keep its communication features online and stable.
Most of the increased usage on the platform is through its messaging and video calling features. Since these features are not monetized, Facebook does not make any money from them.
“Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home,” the social media giant wrote in a blog post.
Facebook notes that it’s also experiencing a decrease in ad spending in countries that are taking aggressive actions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“Our business is being adversely affected like so many others around the world. We don’t monetize many of the services where we’re seeing increased engagement, and we’ve seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19,” Facebook notes.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told The New York Times that “we’re just trying to keep the light on over here.”
Zuckerberg said that he has never seen anything like this before, and that most of Facebook’s struggles right now are due to the fact that its 45,000 employees are working from home.
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