The crisis over Russian-bought ads hasn’t slowed down Facebook yet, but it might.
Facebook said Wednesday that sales topped $10 billion in the third quarter, up nearly 50% from the same quarter a year earlier, fueled by the continued strength of its advertising products. Its profits jumped 79% to $4.7 billion for the quarter.
But CEO Mark Zuckerberg said profits will take a hit as the company invests more heavily in security.
“We’re serious about preventing abuse on our platforms. We’re investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.”
The earnings report was released as a Facebook exec was testifying in the last of three hearings before Congress this week into how foreign nationals used social media to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
At the hearings, Facebook, Twitter and Google were pressed on whether they’re even capable of preventing bad actors from taking advantage of their platforms through ads and regular posts.
Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, said at one hearing that Facebook had more than 10,000 people working on safety and security and would have more than 20,000 people working on those efforts by the end of 2018.
It’s unclear how many, if any, of those people will be full-time employees as opposed to contractors, but the drastic increase highlights the challenge and potential costs of policing a user base that now numbers in the billions.
Facebook now has 2.07 billion monthly users and 1.37 billion people who use the platform every day, according to its earnings report.
“Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well,” Zuckerberg said in the statement. “But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don’t bring people closer together.”
Facebook stock, which closed at an all-time high of $182.66 a share, ticked up another 2% in after hours trading Wednesday.
