Four days before Facebook’s 20th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg was called to a hearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee. – where he was accused of having “blood on his hands”.

The hearing was about children’s online safety, with Zuckerberg apologizing to parents in attendance. The next day, Facebook’s founder announced that Meta Group’s turnover had increased by 25% with quarterly profits of $14 billion, three times as much as a year earlier.

This contradiction has been observed for 20 years: despite data protection scandals, accusations that Instagram and Facebook are harming children and adults, and fears that Russian online campaigns are manipulating American public opinion, people still use the Meta group platforms with great pleasure. The growing number of users also skyrockets the advertising customers and the resulting revenue.

3 billion users every month

Recently, over the course of a single month, users who connected to any of Meta’s platforms, even once, reached 3.98 billion – 3.19 billion of them even connected on a daily basis. As for Facebook specifically, it counted about 3 billion users throughout the month and 2.11 billion every day. These are numbers that seem unreal, given that the population of the entire planet consists of 8 billion people, many of whom are not online.

For some years Zuckerberg has had ambitions to help the rest of the world access the internet through satellites and automated machines. Ultimately, however, the company decided to leave the implementation of this plan to the telecommunications companies.

Man with a virtual reality mask (VR Headset)Man with a virtual reality mask (VR Headset)
The Meta Group is now turning to the future of virtual reality Image: IMAGO/Cover-Images
Instead, the Meta Group and Zuckerberg have two other big projects: artificial intelligence and the digital world of the Metaverse. It seems that Zuckerberg believes strongly in the existence of a virtual reality in the future, which is why he changed the name of his company in the fall of 2021 from Facebook to Meta.

A money making machine

Although Zuckerberg is spending money by the bucketload to create Metaverse, the business is still running and performing very well.

Last year alone, the Reality Labs division’s operating losses exceeded $16 billion, with a turnover of just $1.9 billion. When the advertising department also started to have problems, there was some grumbling from investors due to the uncontrolled spending on the virtual future. But the Meta Group is once again operating as a money-making machine at full speed, and no one doubts the prospect of Reality Labs.

Lately, however, the enthusiasm for artificial intelligence seems to be overshadowing the dream of the Metaverse. And in this case Zuckerberg aims for nothing less than the development of “the most popular and innovative AI products”. If it succeeds, every user of the Meta group’s services will have “a world-class assistant powered by artificial intelligence technology” and every business will have a corresponding system that can communicate directly with its customers.

So in the future will we be communicating on Facebook more with software than with other people? “People want something authentic,” believes head of product Chris Cox. Ideally AI programs will be able to enhance users’ creativity and make their lives easier. But at the same time, Cox adds, an artificial intelligence system that is useful to humans for the simple activities of their daily lives has yet to be found.