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Analytics & Experimentation questions require understanding of core concepts and practice. PracHub provides solutions with explanations to help you master analytics & experimentation interviews.

What difficulty level is this interview question?

This is a medium difficulty Analytics & Experimentation question, commonly asked during Technical Screen rounds at Meta.

What role is this question designed for?

This question is commonly asked for Data Scientist candidates at Meta during technical interviews.

Interpreting metrics when autoplay videos reduce time‑spent but increase DAU

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in behavioral hypothesis generation, causal inference, metric decomposition, and experimental design within the Analytics & Experimentation domain.

Autoplay Snippets: Time‑Spent Down, DAU Up — Explain and Test

Context

You are analyzing an A/B test where short autoplay video previews were enabled in feed. Two seemingly conflicting outcomes were observed:

Per‑session time spent decreased.
Daily Active Users (DAU) increased.

Assume standard definitions:

DAU: unique users with at least one qualifying activity in a day.
Session: a continuous interaction window (e.g., 30‑minute inactivity timeout).
Time‑spent: total active seconds within a session.

Task

Propose behavioral hypotheses that could simultaneously explain shorter sessions and higher DAU (hint: quick‑scroll behavior, re‑engagement of light users).
For each hypothesis, outline the data tests/analyses you would run to validate or falsify it.
Provide a metric decomposition to reconcile the paradox and guide product tuning.
Recommend follow‑up experiments and guardrail metrics to optimize autoplay.

Solution

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