Social media giant Facebook has reached 2.2 billion monthly active users and its profits have an all-time high amidst data leak allegations, content controversy and the #deletefacebook movement on various social media platforms, latest statistics showed Thursday.
On Wednesday, Facebook reported a net income of $4.99 billion for the first quarter of 2018, an increase of 63 percent compared to the same period last year. Facebook's stock prices also surged as its earnings per share reached 1.69 U.S. dollars. The highest in the same period last year was 1.04 dollars.
The tech giant also boasted a 50 percent increase in ad revenues, from $7.86 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2017 to $11.79 billion in 2018, showing that it's still on good terms with advertisers.
The company also managed to increase its user numbers, reporting an average of 1.45 billion daily active users worldwide.
Facebook has been riddled with trouble for the last couple of weeks. It all started with allegations of Russia meddling with the presidential elections in 2016.
Facebook suddenly found itself under the spotlight when it was revealed that a data firm called Cambridge Analytica exploited the personal data of 50 million users, most of which were American voters, to manipulate voter sentiment in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
Following the surface of the data breach scandal, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to a series of senate hearings regarding these allegations earlier this month. During these hearings, Facebook users who found out that their private data were vulnerable to third parties launched the #deletefacebook movement on several social media outlets, asking all to delete, not disable, their Facebook accounts permanently.
Although experts agree that Facebook's ongoing privacy crisis has done little to impact its user growth or revenues, they believe the next quarterly earnings report will give a more accurate picture.
