DEVELOPING Person on fire outside Trump's hush money trial rushed away on a stretcher
A person who was on fire in a park outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place has been rushed away on a stretcher.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off Facebook's quarterly earnings call by addressing the latest wave of coverage based on a trove of leaked internal documents on Monday.
"Good faith criticism helps us get better, but my view is that we are seeing a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company," Zuckerberg said. "The reality is that we have an open culture that encourages discussion and research on our work so we can make progress on many complex issues that are not specific to just us."
The company's results come amid perhaps the biggest crisis in the social media giant's 17-year history. Tens of thousands of pages of internal documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen informed the Wall Street Journal's "Facebook Files" series, and on Monday, a flood of additional news coverage by a consortium of 17 U.S. news organizations, as well as hearings with U.S. and U.K. lawmakers. The documents provide the deepest look yet at many of Facebook's biggest problems, including its struggles to regulate hate speech and misinformation, the use of its platform by human traffickers, research on harms to young people and more.
Facebook has pushed back on many of the reports, saying they are misleading and mischaracterize its research and actions. Zuckerberg last commented on the situation following Haugen's Senate hearing earlier this month, in a statement in which he tried to discredit the whistleblower. Still, on Friday, another former Facebook employee anonymously filed a complaint against the company to the SEC, with allegations similar to Haugen's.
But despite all the bad headlines, the company reminded investors on Monday that it continues to be a money-making machine.
Facebook reported US$29 billion in revenue for the three months ended in September, up 35 per cent from the same period a year earlier. The company posted nearly US$9.2 billion in profit, up 17 per cent from the year prior. The number of people using Facebook's family of apps grew 12 per cent year-over-year, to nearly 3.6 billion during the quarter.
The results were nearly in line with Wall Street analysts' projections. Facebook's stock rose as much as 3 per cent in after-hours trading Monday following the earnings report, before falling to around 1 per cent higher.
Facebook is no stranger to PR crises. And in most cases, Facebook's business has continued to chug along at a healthy clip despite outcry from regulators and the public.
But this time could be different. Facebook's massive ad business is already in a vulnerable state because of recent changes to Apple's app tracking rules. Apple's iOS 14.5 software update, which went into effect in April, requires that users give explicit permission for apps to track their behavior and sell their personal data, such as age, location, spending habits and health information, to advertisers. Facebook has aggressively pushed back against the changes and warned investors last year that the update could hurt its business if many users opt out of tracking.
On Monday, Facebook warned that the iOS 14 changes could create "continued headwinds" in the fourth quarter of 2021.
"We've been open about the fact that there are headwinds coming and we experienced that in Q3. The biggest is the impact of iOS 14 changes," COO Sheryl Sandberg said on the company's earnings call Monday. "As a result, we've encountered two challenges: one is that the accuracy of our ad targeting decreased, which increased the cost of driving outcomes for our advertisers, and the other is that measuring those outcomes became more difficult."
While much of the world spent the day focused on Facebook's real-world harms, the company hinted to investors in the report that it wants them looking forward, not backward. Starting in the fourth quarter, the company plans to break out Facebook Reality Labs — its division dedicated to augmented and virtual reality services — as a separate reporting segment from its family of apps, which includes Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook's namesake social network.
CFO Dave Wehner said Facebook is investing so heavily in this newer division that it will reduce "our overall operating profit in 2021 by approximately US$10 billion."
In a statement with the results, Zuckerberg also focused on what's next: "I'm excited about our roadmap, especially around creators, commerce, and helping to build the metaverse."
During the earnings call, Wall Street analysts asked much more about new Facebook initiatives and products like the metaverse and Instagram Reels than about Monday's news coverage, a reminder that investors often prioritize the company's potential for growth over its potential for harm. Evercore ISI did ask Zuckerberg to evaluate the company's progress on building artificial intelligence that can identify problematic content.
Zuckerberg pointed to the company's quarterly transparency reports, which identify "what percentage of the content that we act on is our AI ... finding rather than people having to report it." He said that "in most of these categories ... 90-plus-percent of the content that we act on, we're identifying largely through the AI system." However, he noted that the success of its systems can vary by category.
"Some of the categories, like hate speech, have been harder," he said, because "we're operating in around 150 languages around the world ... there's a lot of cultural nuance in this."
Zuckerberg also attempted to make a rallying call to his staff.
"I know there is a lot of scrutiny of our efforts, and I guess I just want to say to the team and the people who work on this that I'm really proud of the progress that they make," he said.
A person who was on fire in a park outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is taking place has been rushed away on a stretcher.
Soulful gospel artist Mandisa, a Grammy-winning singer who got her start as a contestant on 'American Idol' in 2006, has died, according to a statement on her verified social media. She was 47.
Scottish comedian Samantha Hannah was working on a comedy show about finding a husband when Toby Hunter came into her life. What happened next surprised them both.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Police in Sault Ste. Marie charged a 22-year-old man with animal cruelty following an attack on a dog Thursday morning.
The Senate legal affairs committee has rejected a motion calling for members to take a $50,000 field trip to the African Lion Safari in southern Ontario to see the zoo's elephant exhibit.
Ontario Provincial Police have landed a suspect following a fishy theft in Beachburg, Ont.
Group of Seven foreign ministers warned of new sanctions against Iran on Friday for its drone and missile attack on Israel, and urged both sides to avoid an escalation of the conflict.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is encouraging veterinarians to keep an eye out for signs of avian influenza in dairy cattle following recent discoveries of cases of the disease in U.S. cow herds.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.