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Facebook may have given up on bringing its social network to China, but it still has a foothold there
Its website is blocked in China, but Facebook still earns big advertising dollars there
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Facebook is blocked in China, and it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is finally coming to terms with it.
On Wednesday, the CEO published a lengthy post about shifting the social network away from public sharing and toward private chats, which he says is part of the company’s new “privacy-focused” vision. He also said Facebook is fine with being banned in countries with weak data protection -- hinting that it may finally stop trying to bring the social network to China, a notion confirmed by a Facebook senior official who spoke to BuzzFeed News.
Facebook has tried in vain for years to bring its website to China -- but it doesn't mean that the company is entirely absent from the country.
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As Zuckerberg suggested in his lengthy post: “There’s an important difference between providing a service in a country and storing people’s data there.” And yes, Facebook does provide a service in China -- to Chinese companies that want to reach overseas users.
A lot of the ads you’re seeing on Facebook come from Chinese companies. Research shows that nearly 10 percent of Facebook’s revenue is actually from China, which would make it the second biggest ad buyer after the US.
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