Handing Facebook parent Meta Platforms a defeat, a federal judge has granted class-action status to advertisers suing the company over allegedly inflated metrics.
The tech billionaire, who has been on the board of the company formerly known as Facebook since 2005, is backing numerous politicians in the midterm elections.
Facebook Parent Meta Posts Lower 4Q Profit, Shares Plunge
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said it earned $10.29 billion, or $3.67 per share, in the final three months of 2021. That’s down 8% from $11.22 billion, or $3.88 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to 20% to $33.67 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $3.85 per share on revenue of $33.36 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to four major social media companies — Alphabet, Meta, Reddit and Twitter — criticizing them for allowing extremism to spread on their platforms and saying they have failed to cooperate adequately with the inquiry.
U.S. antitrust officials can continue their case to break up Meta, Facebook’s parent company, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the social media giant, which had argued the complaint should be dismissed. The decision allows federal prosecutors to try to prove their allegations that Meta has illegally abused a monopoly in the marketplace for social media — and that its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off.
T-Mobile is dropping out of CES 2022 because of COVID-19 concerns, the company said Tuesday, with CEO Mike Sievert no longer scheduled to deliver a keynote presentation either in person or virtually. Meta and Twitter came to the same decision, it was announced Tuesday. CES is set to take place during the first week of January, in Las Vegas.
Exclusives
The global advertising industry will notch higher growth this year than previously expected as brands are relying more heavily on search engine and social media companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta Platforms to reach customers during the pandemic, according to two ad industry forecasts released today.
Ad buyers will no longer be able to use topics such as health, race or sexual orientation to target people with unwanted ads on Facebook or other Meta apps.
The social networking company has discussed opening physical stores to showcase its virtual reality and augmented reality devices.
The Metaverse Is Mark Zuckerberg’s Escape Hatch
If his new strategy works — a big if — it could help address several of Facebook’s biggest problems.
Facebook the app, along with Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, are here to stay; the company’s corporate structure also won’t change. But on Dec. 1, its shares will start trading under a new ticker symbol, “MVRS.”
