Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost an estimated $16 billion in five minutes Thursday following a disastrous second quarter earnings report; raising serious questions over his future at the helm of one of the world’s largest social media platforms.
Zuckerberg has been struggling to right the ship for months following a string of privacy-related scandals; pledging to crackdown on “fake news,” racism, and foreign meddling in the US election system.
“The extent of the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the new European privacy law, known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is not yet clear. In the U.S. and Canada, Facebook’s daily active users remained flat sequentially at 185 million, while the number actually fell in Europe, falling to 279 million, down from 282 million,” writes Fox News.
“We plan to grow and promote certain engaging experiences like Stories that currently have lower levels of monetization, and we are also giving people who use our services more choices around data privacy, which may have an impact on our revenue growth,” said CFO David Wehner.
Read the full story at Fox News.
POLITICAL PREDICTION: Facebook Predicts if You’re Liberal or Conservative, Here’s How to Find Out
The fallout surrounding Facebook’s recent admission that it handed over the personal data of over 50 million users escalated Tuesday; with founder Mark Zuckerberg agreeing to testify before Congressional investigators in the coming weeks.
The fierce backlash began earlier this month, when the social media giant admitted handing over sensitive material to Cambridge Analytica and other organizations throughout the 2016 campaign and beyond; prompting users to question how their private information is bought and sold on the internet.
At the heart of the matter is Facebook’s internal software that predicts whether you’re very liberal, very conservative, or anything in between. Here’s how to find out what Facebook thinks of you:
- Open account “Settings.”
- Select “Ads” on the left-hand column.
- Click “Your Information” and then “Your Categories.”
- It will then reveal if Facebook thinks your “very conservative,” “very liberal,” and everything in between.
Read the full story at Fox News.
DEBUNKED: Facebook Admits Users Didn't See Russian Ads Until AFTER Election
The media’s Russia-Trump collusion narrative continued to collapse this week, after Facebook officials told Congressional investigators that nearly half of the 10 million users “exposed” to Russian-backed advertisements didn’t see the material until after the 2016 election.
Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s Vice President of Policy and Communications, told lawmakers that 56% of ads appeared on the social media giant’s webpage after Election Day, with 44% appearing on the site before November.
Facebook recently supplied Congress with approximately 3,000 paid advertisements with links to Russian-backed firms or organizations. The technology giant informed investigators that the ads cost roughly $100,000, and believe they were purchased by Kremlin supported sources to siphon votes away from Hillary Clinton and towards Donald Trump.
“Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone,” Schrage added. “That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.”
“Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights,” Schrage said. “A number of them appear to encourage people to follow Pages on these issues.”
Doomed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has routinely blamed Facebook –as well as a host of other external factors- for her surprising defeat to Donald Trump last fall. The former Secretary of State claims that Russia, using Facebook, twitter, and other forms of social media, colluded with President Trump to steal the 2016 election.
h/t Daily Caller
