Facebook announced over $9 billion in quarterly profits on Monday, hours after a US news collective published a deluge of reports arguing the company prioritizes its growth over people’s safety.
The social media giant has been battling a fresh crisis since former employee Frances Haugen leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of their sites’ potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation.
Facebook released results showing its profit in the recently-ended quarter grew to $9.2 billion — a 17 percent increase — and its ranks of users increased to 2.91 billion.
Facebook executives said on an earnings call that the tech titan would have brought in even more money if not for Apple updating its iPhone operating system to thwart advertisers tracking app users for ad targeting without permission.
“Overall, if it wasn’t for Apple’s iOS 14 changes, we would have seen positive quarter over quarter revenue growth,” Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said of the iPhone software tweak made in the name of protecting privacy.
Hours earlier, news reports blamed CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his platform bending to state censors in Vietnam, noted Facebook allowed hate speech to flourish internationally due to linguistic shortcomings and said it knew its algorithm fuelled toxic polarisation online.
“These damning documents underscore that Facebook leadership chronically ignored serious internal alarms, choosing to put profits over people,” US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Big Tech critic, said in a statement.
News organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Wired were among those that have now received access to the set of internal Facebook documents that Haugen originally leaked to US authorities and which were the basis of a damning Wall Street Journal series.
Facebook said the reporting was an effort to cast the social network in bad light.
“Good faith criticism helps us get better, but my view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.
*This article was written by Agencies for Uzalendo News. Email: uzalendonews24@gmail.com to submit your story.
