Category Archives: Mark Zuckerberg

Meta rides AI boom to stellar quarterly earnings, but slightly less than expected

Posted on by

Company beats financial predictions but does not increase daily users as much as Wall Street thought it might

Meta’s blowout year continues after the company reported another stellar financial quarter on Wednesday. Shares fell in after-hours trading.

Wall Street analysts had high expectations for the Instagram and WhatsApp parent company, projecting an 18% jump in sales year over year. The company reported $40.6bn in sales, a 19% increase year over year that outpaced investor expectations of $40.19bn. Meta, which saw a 25% jump in its share price over the past two months, reported $6.03 in earnings per share (EPS), surpassing Wall Street’s expectations of an EPS of $5.29.

Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg to receive $700m from Meta dividends

Posted on by

Facebook’s parent company to pay out to shareholders as it reports $40bn revenues for final quarter

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is expected to receive $700m (£549m) a year in dividends.

On Thursday, Meta announced it would pay its first-ever quarterly dividend to investors since Facebook floated on the stock market in 2012, after beating Wall Street expectations with $40bn in revenues for the final quarter last year.

Continue reading...

‘It was forced’: grieving parents unfazed by sorry tech CEOs at US Senate hearing

Posted on by

Many parents held up images of the children who died after falling prey to abusers on apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat

Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of children who killed themselves after being subjected to online sexual exploitation during a US Senate hearing Wednesday. Evan Spiegel offered condolences to parents whose children obtained deadly illegal drugs via Snapchat. The words were too little, too late for their intended audience, though. The grieving guardians expressed only frustration with the social media CEOs’ responses to their plight and to questions from members of Congress.

“I’m not happy with the answers the CEOs are giving. They can’t give a straight answer. Not even ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Tammy Rodriguez, the mother of Selena Rodriguez, who was 11 when she died by suicide three years ago after being solicited for sexually exploitative content by strangers on Instagram and Snapchat.

Continue reading...

Zuckerberg derided for his ‘high quality beef’ ranch where cows are fed macadamia nuts and beer

Posted on by

Critics call cattle-raising project on Hawaii ranch ‘a billionaire’s strange sideshow’ and bad for the environment

The social media tycoon Mark Zuckerberg’s latest business venture raising “world-class” beef cattle on his sprawling luxury Hawaiian hideaway has been derided as out of touch and environmentally irresponsible.

The Meta billionaire posted a picture of himself on Wednesday eating a steak – medium rare, no sides – from his Ko’olau ranch, a 1,400-acre compound on Kauai, Hawaii’s oldest island.

Continue reading...

Meta encryption plan will let child abusers ‘hide in the dark’, says UK campaign

Posted on by

In Home Office initiative, survivors urge Mark Zuckerberg to rethink changes to Messenger and Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to roll out encrypted messaging on his platforms will let child abusers “hide in the dark”, according to a government campaign urging the tech billionaire to halt the move.

The Facebook founder has been under pressure from ministers over plans to automatically encrypt communications on his Messenger service later this year, with Instagram expected to follow soon after.

Continue reading...

Tech leaders agree on AI regulation but divided on how in Washington forum

Posted on by

Bill Gates, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman and others gathered for ‘one of the most important conversations of the year’

A delegation of top tech leaders including Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman convened in Washington on Wednesday for a closed-door meeting with US senators to discuss the rise of artificial intelligence and how it should be regulated.

The discussion, billed as an “AI safety forum”, is one of several meetings between Silicon Valley, researchers, labor leaders and government and is taking on fresh urgency with the US elections looming and the rapid pace of AI advancement already affecting peoples’ lives and work.

Continue reading...

Threads app usage plummets despite initial promise as refuge from Twitter

Posted on by

Social media app, launched in the wake of Twitter chaos, recorded 576,000 active users in August, down 79% from 2.3 million in July

The daily usage of Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, continues to slump after a strong start in its first weeks of existence.

Engagement with the social media app is down 79% from a high of 2.3m active users in early July to 576,000 as of 7 August, according to Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform.

Continue reading...

Musk says proposed Zuckerberg cage fight to be held at ‘epic location’ in Italy

Posted on by

X owner in talks with government over historic site for event – though Colosseum and Rome ruled out

Elon Musk is in talks with Italy’s government about hosting his proposed cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg at a historic site in the country, but the Colosseum has been ruled out as a venue.

The owner of X Corp and the chief executive of Facebook-owner Meta first raised the idea of a one-on-one scrap in a series of social media posts back in June. The challenge came as Zuckerberg prepared to launch Threads, a rival microblogging site to Musk’s now rebranded Twitter platform.

Continue reading...

Changing Meta’s algorithms did not help US political polarization, study finds

Posted on by

Study of Facebook and Instagram data from 2020 election shows chronological lists had no measurable impact on polarization

The powerful algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram have increasingly been blamed for amplifying misinformation and political polarization. But a series of groundbreaking studies published on Thursday suggest addressing these challenges will require more than just tweaking the platforms’ software.

The four research papers, published in Science and Nature also reveal the extent of political echo chambers on Facebook, where conservatives and liberals rely on divergent sources of information, interact with opposing groups and consume distinctly different amounts of misinformation.

Continue reading...

Elon Musk goes low against Zuckerberg as Twitter-Threads spat intensifies

Posted on by

Twitter owner calls Facebook founder a ‘cuck’ as rancour grows over launch of Threads, a competitor to Musk’s network

Twitter owner Elon Musk has suggested he and Mark Zuckerberg should have “a literal dick-measuring contest” in the latest broadside aimed at his rival billionaire.

In a message inspired by the Meta chief executive’s launch last week of Threads, a Twitter competitor, Musk added a ruler emoji.

Continue reading...

Twitter threatens to sue Meta over launch of rival Threads app

Posted on by

In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a lawyer for the Elon Musk-owned app said Meta had unlawfully misappropriated trade secrets

Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new Threads app, which Mark Zuckerberg has openly billed as a rival, claiming the company has violated Twitter’s “intellectual property rights”.

In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, first published by the news outlet Semafor, a lawyer for Twitter said the company “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.

Continue reading...

Zuckerberg’s Meta to lay off another 10,000 employees

Posted on by

Restructuring, as part of the company’s ‘Year of Efficiency’, also sees 5,000 unfulfilled job adverts closed without hiring

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is laying off another 10,000 people and instituting a further hiring freeze as part of the company’s “Year of Efficiency”, the chief executive announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

The restructuring, which also sees a further 5,000 unfilled job adverts closed without hiring, comes less than six months after the company announced another wave of 11,000 redundancies. At its peak in 2022, Meta had grown to 87,000 employees globally, with a substantial portion of that hiring occurring in the middle of the Covid pandemic.

Continue reading...

Facebook and Instagram to get paid verification as Twitter charges for two-factor SMS authentication

Posted on by

Mark Zuckerberg follows Elon Musk’s lead in introducing fee for blue ticks, as Twitter gets set to charge for 2FA via SMS

Facebook and Instagram users will soon need to pay to be verified on the social media platforms, as Meta follows in the footsteps of rival platform Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced in a Facebook post on Sunday that the service would first roll out in Australia and New Zealand later this week.

Continue reading...

Fears of layoffs as Facebook parent Meta announces hiring freeze

Posted on by

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says tech company aims to ‘plan somewhat conservatively’ and will ‘further restructure’

Meta employees have been warned of potential layoffs after the Facebook parent company announced on Thursday it would freeze hiring and “further restructure”, Bloomberg News has reported.

In company communication with employees, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg cited the uncertain macroeconomic environment for the changes. The announcement comes after several tech companies have been forced to slash headcount in recent months, as advertisers trim spending in anticipation of a recession.

Continue reading...

Nick Clegg to decide on Trump’s 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook

Posted on by

Meta’s president of global affairs said it would be a decision ‘I oversee’ after the ex-president’s accounts were suspended in 2021

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, is charged with deciding whether Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram in 2023, Clegg said on Thursday.

Speaking at an event held in Washington by news organization Semafor, Clegg said the company was seriously debating whether Trump’s accounts should be reinstated and said it was a decision that “I oversee and I drive”.

Continue reading...

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach lawsuit ends in 11th hour settlement

Posted on by

Dramatic move shows Mark Zuckerberg ‘desperate to avoid being questioned over cover-up’, says Observer journalist who exposed scandal

Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.

A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm.

Continue reading...

‘Every move scrutinized’: Facebook’s rocky road to the metaverse

Posted on by

The CEO has changed the world – but he faces regulatory, technological and branding troubles in his push to do it again

It would hardly be hyperbole to say that since its founding in 2004, Facebook has taken over the world – counting more than 50% of the global population as its user base. But after years of domination built on advertising revenue, the company has nearly overnight tried to knock down that empire and build anew.

In October 2021, more than 15 years and 2.8 billion users after the then student Mark Zuckerberg launched the social media platform from his college dorm, Facebook announced it had become “Meta” and was refocusing on the company’s virtual reality endeavors.

Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is building the world’s fastest supercomputer

Posted on by

Facebook founder’s planned metaverse, blending reality with digital experiences, will require enormous computing power

Mark Zuckerberg has announced his social media empire is building what he claims is the world’s fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer as part of plans to build a virtual metaverse.

The Facebook founder said in a blogpost that the metaverse, a concept that blends the physical and digital world via virtual and augmented reality, will require “enormous” computing power. The AI supercomputer, dubbed AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) by Zuckerberg’s Meta business, is already the fifth fastest in the world, the company said.

Continue reading...

Space cadets Branson and Bezos scoop the 2021 shamelessness prize

Posted on by

Virgin and Amazon bosses do well in our awards for business brass neck, but there are also nods to big oil, big money – and a powerful whiff of Musk

Every Christmas, Observer Business Agenda casts its eye over the year that was, seeking to spotlight the business luminaries whose deeds might otherwise have gone unrecognised. At first glance 2021 looked awfully similar to 2020 – a pandemic, various lockdowns and a new wave of infections to round it all off – but it soon became clear that there were still candidates worthy of special recognition.

Continue reading...

Democracy at risk if Facebook does not change, says former Zuckerberg adviser

Posted on by

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, also calls misuse of user data as unethical as child labour

A former adviser to Mark Zuckerberg has said democracy “may never recover” if Facebook does not change and has called for misuse of users’ data to be labelled as unethical as child labour.

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook who has become a staunch critic of the business, said revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugen have created an opportunity for change at Zuckerberg’s social media empire.

Continue reading...