Facebook's earnings just crushed Wall Street's expectations

Mark Zuckerberg.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Facebook has added another data controversy to its very long list of privacy snafus. But there's no sign of disaster on its fourth quarter earnings report.

The company blasted past its predicted revenue of $16.39 billion in the last quarter, taking in $16.91 billion, it revealed in a 2018 earnings report on Wednesday. Facebook's active user base in the U.S. and Canada has barely grown in the past year and a half, but steady growth around the world strengthened its earnings to $2.38 per share over a $2.19 forecast, CNBC reports.

The report comes just hours after TechCrunch reported that Facebook has been paying $20 a month to users as young as 13 who gave Facebook "nearly limitless access" to their devices and data through a virtual private network. The app violated Apple's standards, and the company deleted the experimental iOS app and revoked Facebook's developer license. And that's far from the only data controversy Facebook suffered in the past year, let alone the past quarter.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

So, with Americans pledging to #DeleteFacebook and user numbers showing that Facebook's North American base isn't growing, how is the company still swelling? Easy: Facebook's monthly active user base grew by 49 million in the last quarter and nearly 200 million in the past year around the world.

Read Facebook's whole earnings report and ponder how a scandal-ridden social media company makes so much money here.

Explore More

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.