Meta rakes in record $40 billion in revenue amid accusations of child exploitation through its platforms

Social media giant Meta took in record revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 with the help of a rebound in digital advertising, making an impressive $40.1 billion. This as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has endured heavy accusations from federal authorities over alleged child abuse and exploitation happening through the use of Meta platforms.

The company managed to hit average revenue expectations, which were set at around $39 billion.

As well, despite a round of layoffs in the previous year, Meta soared and was able to triple its net income, hitting $14 billion, an increase of 201% over 2022.

Sales in Q4 were up 25% over 2022.

Meta has seemingly managed to tackle the issue that the brand's platforms have struggled with at their peak: adding new users. Meta reportedly increased users across its platforms by 6% year over year closing out 2023, totaling 3.98 billion users, Variety noted.

In addition to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, even Threads — the company's answer to Twitter/X — allegedly hosted 130 million active monthly users.

Shares have reached all-time highs at more than $465 per share at the time of this writing, as Meta's board declared that they intended to pay cash dividends on a quarterly basis moving forward.

"We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow," Zuckerberg said. "We’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse."

The announcement comes as Zuckerberg/Meta and other social media companies took a hammering at a Senate committee hearing titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis."

Along with representatives from platforms like TikTok, Zuckerberg took a metaphorical beating surrounding his company's response to alleged child abuse that has been facilitated by bad actors through its platforms.

Senator Ted Cruz questioned the CEO about a warning screen for child abuse search results on Instagram where users could simply bypass it in order to see the results. Zuckerberg argued that it was better to offer resources to anyone who was searching such terms and offered the explanation that the company still allowed users to see results because the search function may have improperly labeled the user's search.

Zuckerberg also took the opportunity to apologize to families in attendance who had lost children due to child exploitation schemes on social media.

"I’m sorry for everything you have all been through," the CEO said, after Senator Josh Hawley asked him if he'd like to apologize. "No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer," he added, according to the Guardian.

Meta recently announced that it would take action in order to hide content from teens on Facebook and Instagram that talks about suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders.

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