Social media: A look at how Facebook shrugs off its scandals

Facebook has paid record-setting fines to the Federal Trade Commission implicit the past 2 years, suspended Donald Trump’s accounts and had a whistleblower attest to Congress of its antagonistic impacts connected the U.S. But the institution and different societal media outlets proceed to turn faster than expected.

Nothing seems to faze Facebook. The Menlo Park-based institution changed its firm sanction to Meta connected Thursday, Oct. 28, conscionable days aft a bid of stories surrounding the Facebook Papers. The papers — much than 10,000 pages of redacted interior documents obtained by respective quality organizations including The Associated Press — shed airy connected the company’s attack to misinformation and hatred code moderation.

On Monday, Oct. 25, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen gave grounds to U.K. lawmakers astir however the institution has dedicated small resources to halt the dispersed of mendacious accusation connected respective topics specified arsenic the 2020 statesmanlike predetermination and the COVID-19 vaccines.

The societal media elephantine is not caller to scandal. It paid a record-setting $5 cardinal fine successful 2019 to the FTC implicit allegations it deceived users astir their quality to power the privateness of their idiosyncratic information.

Facebook said its nett income grew 17% successful the July-September play to $9.19 billion, buoyed by beardown advertizing revenue. That’s up from $7.85 cardinal a twelvemonth earlier. Revenue grew 35% to $29.01 billion. The results exceeded expert expectations.

Facebook regulation

On Monday, Oct. 25, aft Haugen testified successful London, Facebook said, “While we person rules against harmful contented and people regular transparency reports, we hold we request regularisation for the full manufacture truthful that businesses similar ours aren’t making these decisions connected our own.”

Facebook pointed to investing $13 cardinal connected information and information since 2016, asserting it’s “almost halved” the magnitude of hatred code implicit the past 3 quarters.

The world’s colonisation was estimated to beryllium astir 7.83 cardinal successful January. There are present 4.20 cardinal societal media users astir the world. This fig has grown by 490 cardinal (up 13%) successful the past year.

It is estimated that 53% of the world’s colonisation are utilizing societal media and 35.6% are utilizing Facebook.

Online platforms

According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 81% of Americans accidental they usage YouTube. The second-most utilized level was Facebook astatine 69%.

Sources: Facebook, BusinessInsider, The Associated Press, The Guardian, Time magazine, Slate, TechCrunch, Computerworld, NASDAQ.com, Wearesocial.net, The Pew Research Center

Researcher Charles Apple contributed to this report.