Facebook now has 2.38 billion monthly active users but faces $5 billion fine

Facebook beat revenue and monthly active user (MAU) forecasts during the first quarter of 2019, the company revealed in its first quarter 2019 earnings report.

While Facebook’s daily active user (DAU) count remained static at 1.56 billion, the social network’s number of MAU rose to 2.38 billion, above the 2.37 billion that were forecast. Of these 2.38 billion users, 186 million are in the U.S. and Canada. This is a figure that did not change during Q1, said Facebook.

Additionally, Facebook posted $15.08 billion USD (about $20.4 billion CAD) in revenue, compared to industry estimates of $14.98 billion USD (roughly $20.2 billion CAD). Specifically, Facebook says its average revenue per user has reached $6.42 USD ($8.66 CAD), up 16 percent from $5.53 USD ($7.46 CAD) a year ago.

“We had a good quarter and our business and community continue to grow,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We are focused on building out our privacy-focused vision for the future of social networking, and working collaboratively to address important issues around the internet.”

However, Facebook said it expects to be charged as much as $5 billion USD (about $6.75 billion CAD) due to an ongoing inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Since March 2018, the U.S. agency has been investigating Facebook over its role in Cambridge Analytica’s improper access of 87 billion Facebook users’ data.

This would be, by and large, the most significant FTC fine that a tech company has ever had to pay, with the current record being Google’s privacy-related penalty of $22.5 million in 2012.

“We estimate that the range of loss in this matter is $3.0 billion to $5.0 billion,” Facebook said of the FTC inquiry. “The matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome.”

Source: Facebook