[HN Gopher] Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2021 Results
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Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2021 Results
Author : gotmedium
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-10-25 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (investor.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (investor.fb.com)
| marc__1 wrote:
| Interesting commentary on the 'metaverse'
|
| _> Starting with our results for the fourth quarter of 2021, we
| plan to break out Facebook Reality Labs, or FRL, as a separate
| reporting segment. As we have discussed, we are dedicating
| significant resources toward our augmented and virtual reality
| products and services_
|
| _> We expect our investment in Facebook Reality Labs to reduce
| our overall operating profit in 2021 by approximately $10
| billion. We are committed to bringing this long-term vision to
| life and we expect to increase our investments for the next
| several years._
| ArtWomb wrote:
| I feel like "network effects" in the metaverse will be
| compounded cubic: the nodes, the edges, then the third
| mysterious component emerging from the shared hallucination
| itself ;)
| kurthr wrote:
| I suspect the upcoming HW need of XR metaverse is in the
| foveal rendering required for low latency retina resolution
| immersive HMD. For cost/weight/power that probably means eye-
| tracking, which is gold standard for ad tracking and
| marketing attention metrics.
|
| Give away the hardware to high status college students and
| sell their attention metrics to advertisers. Very FB! Of
| course you need content too, but users can provide that,
| right?
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Right. Today, video game streamers prefer to disguise their
| identity behind 2D anime style virtual avatars
| ("v-tubers"). Same reach, but their irl persona gets
| shielded from trolls ;)
| jasode wrote:
| Interesting that Apple in April rolled out privacy prompts[1]
| that Facebook complained about (and tried to persuade public
| opinion with a full-page ad in December 2020) ... and yet it
| didn't seem to slow down Facebook's numbers by much:
| 2021-09 $28.2b revenue, $9.1b income +17% 2020-09 $21.2b
| revenue, $7.8b income
|
| Possibilities:
|
| - ads shown to iPhone FB users smaller piece of revenue pie than
| Android FB users
|
| - advertisers keep spending the same amount (or more) even though
| they have less info because of less tracking of Apple users to
| correlate with dollars spent
|
| People keep saying FB is in trouble but it doesn't matter if it's
| the leaked research about emotional manipulation, or the
| Cambridge Analytica scandal, or extra Apple privacy features. The
| revenue keeps coming in and growing. Who thinks all of today's
| press about the recent whistleblowers will have any effect on
| next year's numbers?
|
| [1] 96% of iOS users opt out of app tracking:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+apple+opt-in+privac...
| cm2012 wrote:
| 1) Its the latter, iPhone remains bigger than Android in fb ad
| spend.
|
| 2) The whistle-blower stuff will have no effect at all on FBs
| numbers. Opinions on FB are set at this point.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| >> 2020-09 $21.2b revenue, $7.8b income
|
| >> 2021-09 $28.2b revenue, $9.1b income +17%
|
| Let's not overlook the 5.4% inflation rate during this time
| period.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| You have your dates transposed.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Insane right? This is behemoth, they would need a near calamity
| to stop printing money.
| fossuser wrote:
| FB is the least likely to be hurt by Apple's move since they
| have their own massive number of users across multiple
| properties and lots of tracking on the web. If anything they
| might benefit by smaller players that have less access getting
| hurt more by Apple.
|
| I'm not personally a fan of FB (mostly due to the ad based
| business model), but today's negative press will have zero
| affect on them - mostly because (imo) it's bullshit. A lot of
| the issues FB deals with are social problems at scale. It's
| insane that any one company is expected to successfully
| moderate three billion people, they're doing the best they can
| with impossible constraints.
|
| If anything unseats them it'll be a technical shift that moves
| things to protocols 'web3'. Zuckerberg is an extremely good CEO
| though so I suspect he's already planning for this potential
| and FB's upcoming name change and structure is probably a way
| to accommodate this (in addition to having Oculus be a more
| separate entity for VR/AR and the next platform).
| trhway wrote:
| >It's insane that any one company is expected to successfully
| moderate three billion people, they're doing the best they
| can with impossible constraints.
|
| "moderate"? as far as i understand they stoke the fire.
| Whatever cultural wars are raging on FB, Coka vs. Pepsi,
| liberals vs. conservatives, FB gets engagement, ie. money,
| from the both sides. They are like fight cage owner - they
| get paid either way. And their "moderation" - just like the
| fight cage owner they may prevent the fighters from say using
| knives as it would adversely affect the quality of fight -
| ends too soon, etc. - and thus revenue.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think giving some people special privileges that
| allows them to post revenge porn which ruins people's lives
| is the best they can do. I don't think allowing ads that they
| know are contributing to sex slavery is the best they can do.
| I definitely don't think allowing governments to organize
| genocide on their platform is the best they can do.
|
| Their constraints are not impossible. They've just got to
| realize that their algorithm to detect rule breaking doesn't
| work and they need to hire minimum 100,000 moderators.
| whymauri wrote:
| One just has to read the leaks of internal employee
| messages to realize that FB is clearly not doing the best
| they can do. Literally by admission of their own employees.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-
| p...
| aierou wrote:
| Your own examples cover a broad range of social and
| political issues that even the savviest state governments
| struggle to navigate. How could anyone possibly moderate
| for such delicate and complex expectations?
|
| _100,000 moderators_? Perhaps our demands for censorship
| are what is unreasonable.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Facebook can easily afford 100,000 moderators. If they
| don't want to do what it takes to make their platform
| safe they should expect legal intervention.
| munk-a wrote:
| > A lot of the issues FB deals with are social problems at
| scale. It's insane that any one company is expected to
| successfully moderate three billion people, they're doing the
| best they can with impossible constraints.
|
| This is a problem that they've created at scale. In the US
| our closest thing to social issue moderation is probably the
| police (though please leave any efficacy discussion at the
| door) and there are 17 officers per 10k people in the US that
| make 67.6k/annual. Amortized per capita we expend about
| $114.92 for law enforcement in the real world - Facebook
| doesn't need a similar per-capita expenditure to keep its
| platform, but if you think it ends up spending more than 5
| cents per user in amortized moderation costs I've got a
| Bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
|
| This social issue at scale didn't exist before Facebook - it
| might have naturally existed over time through the popularity
| of platforms like Disqus and disjointed forums. But Facebook
| owns the problem and nurtured it into the beast we know
| today. The social problems are an externality of Facebook's
| business model which they want nothing to do with fixing - it
| should be treated no differently than a paper mill polluting
| a river.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Exactly humanity is on Facebook and there are different
| subsets of humanity who think differently (it would be a lame
| world if we all thought like each other .. who'd we argue and
| debate with and more). Facebook needs to and always remain a
| neutral party where there isnt physical danger occurring or
| happening.
|
| The whistleblower is backed by Pierre Omiydar's foundatoin,
| the founder of E-bay. So it could be a bit of one billionaire
| using his money to go after another.
|
| The whistleblower is a nothing burger and she now works
| indirectly for Ebay cofounder. She is having her 15 minutes
| of fame and Im sure people who cheer her on will hire her in
| the future.
| fossuser wrote:
| To me "whistleblowing" is supposed to be about revealing
| criminal activity.
|
| This stuff is just hard policy challenges without any easy
| answers. FB is generally open about that and what they're
| trying to do in order to reduce risk. The problem is mostly
| upstream.
|
| I'm not an apologist and FB has made mistakes (Steven
| Levy's book Facebook: The Inside Story is a great look into
| a lot of the history and it's rare in that it's actually a
| fair account of things). Growth at all costs (Chamath's
| team) lead to a lot of problems in developing countries.
| Incentives around engagement and controversy, etc. FB has
| massive teams working on reducing the risks around this
| stuff, but it's impossible to eliminate because most of
| humanity believes insane contradictory things.
|
| "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing
| all barriers to communication between different races and
| cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything
| else in the history of creation."
|
| Put three billion tribal apes in one place and what do you
| expect? HN is the best case outcome and dang does a great
| job, but we're a pretty selected bunch, and even then it's
| difficult to pull off (and we're a smaller, focused
| community).
|
| We're trapped in a local maximum largely because our
| computing stack sucks (imo) and everything has to be a SaaS
| due to the extreme complexity and cost to administer
| anything. I hope that Urbit succeeds and we get out of
| this, but I don't think this is something FB can really fix
| - it's not even a problem anyone should be responsible for
| fixing. The fact things are like this is an accident of
| history and hopefully an anachronism of our time.
|
| It also doesn't help that our politicians (across the
| political spectrum) mostly just aren't very smart:
| https://www.piratewires.com/p/jack-be-nimble-jack-be-quick
| moneywoes wrote:
| Please eli5 web3. Keep seeing the term but haven't found a
| good answer
| fossuser wrote:
| It loosely refers to decentralized applications that have
| some form of protocol level way to incentivize users. This
| is often blockchain related, but not always (Urbit isn't
| except for its IDs).
|
| An example would be Audius:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zh0WlrFWBg&t=567s
|
| That interview should give you some idea, the space is very
| young but the tech is interesting.
| neurobashing wrote:
| I took it to mean something about use of blockchain,
| especially but not limited to Ethereum, and "smart
| contracts", to create a new kind of distributed app
| platform. But I am not sure that's right.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _It 's insane that any one company is expected to
| successfully moderate three billion people, they're doing the
| best they can with impossible constraints._
|
| Nobody's going to sympathize too much with a company that
| brought its woes upon itself. If you can't handle moderating
| three billion people, don't put yourself in the position of
| trying to moderate three billion people.
| reed1234 wrote:
| So what are you suggesting? For Facebook to decide to just
| turn off the lights one day? There is evidently market for
| a social network like Facebook so I'm sure another would
| step in before too long with the same problem.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| There is plenty they could do. Just today it's been
| reported that Facebook themselves "have compelling
| evidence that our core product mechanics, such as
| vitality, recommendations, and optimizing for engagement,
| are a significant part of why [hate] speech flourish[es]
| on the platform"[0]
|
| FB doesn't need to shut down, they just need to give a
| fuck about the safety of their users and the societies in
| which they live.
|
| It's been evident to anyone who cares to look that this
| has not been the case.
|
| [0] "Facebook admits site appears hardwired for
| misinformation, memo reveals" https://www.theguardian.com
| /technology/2021/oct/25/facebook-...
| nitrogen wrote:
| Federate. We went from walled gardens of the late 1980s
| and early 1990s to the federated Internet, but now we're
| back to walled gardens. It takes a diversity of
| approaches to solve the diversity of problems, and that's
| only really possible with separate organizations all
| competing to solve those problems for different niches.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| FB wasn't affected as every single user said "ok, don't show
| this again" or some version of that.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| The newly updated DOJ complaint alleges collusion w/ google to
| deanonymize users to work around Apple's privacy changes...
| SliderUp wrote:
| It's shitty. Doesn't seem to be illegal though?
| alangibson wrote:
| I loathe Fb as much as anyone, but if you're just looking to make
| money their stock is the biggest 'buy' on Earth. Their numbers
| only get better in the face of bad news, they've barely started
| tapping the potential revenue from Ig, and they haven't even
| begun to monetize Whatsapp.
| blocked_again wrote:
| > I loathe Fb as much as anyone, but their stock is the biggest
| 'buy' on Earth.
|
| Obviously has never heard of Crypto.
| alangibson wrote:
| > Obviously has never heard of Crypto
|
| Obviously has never heard of revenue
| blocked_again wrote:
| Obviously has never heard of DeFi.
| alangibson wrote:
| Because those schemes are going great. Keep trying
| though.
| nojito wrote:
| Maybe but FB/google and Apple are in the cross hairs of the DOJ
| and it's likely we will see a Microsoft level ruling come down
| on all three of them.
| nipponese wrote:
| I think point I think the insiders 90% "know" whether DOJ
| action is going to come down or not and have already built
| that into the stock price.
| alangibson wrote:
| It's hard to say that MS was hurt by the DOJ given their
| current market cap.
|
| Also, the US federal government is a shambles. They can't put
| together an inquiry on what lead to the seat of government
| being literally overrun, so I'd be incredibly surprised if
| they managed to take action against one of the most well
| funded entities on earth.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I commented after the IOS14 stuff that FB revenue would obviously
| go up in Q3 as it has every quarter for years, to some
| incredulity on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845536.
|
| As always, FB keeps on trucking.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Is this because people still use Instagram and not "Facebook"?
| ksec wrote:
| And I remember that :)
|
| So thank you for the quality comments. Especially from people
| working in the ads industry. Which often get attacked on HN
| just due to its nature.
| bryan_w wrote:
| The share buyback amount seems kinda high, I guess they are
| expecting even more free cash flow in the future?
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The Tl;dr
|
| Facebook reports Q3 revenue up 35% YoY to $29.0B, profit of
| $9.2B, up 17% YoY, DAUs up 6% to 1.93B, headcount up 20% to
| 68,177, and ups share buybacks by $50B
| kaiju0 wrote:
| The metric that matters. All is well there.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Buybacks?
| brink wrote:
| I'm really impressed that with Facebook's poor reputation and age
| that it's still able to grow by 11% daily active users in a year.
| m0zg wrote:
| Probably creative accounting. Nobody really knows what their
| "users" actually mean anymore. There's no way to really grow
| users from their particular baseline.
| rednerrus wrote:
| The dollars on the bottom line kept going up as well.
| m0zg wrote:
| The dollars can keep going up through collusion with
| Google, to give just one example. Or by smothering existing
| uses with even more ads. Or by charging more for ads. Or
| all of the above at the same time. Dollars and users are
| not directly proportional. Particularly the low-RPU foreign
| users responsible for whatever non-creative part of this
| growth that exists, if any.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| I doubt most people even associate Instagram with Facebook.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Anecdote, but my grandparents joined to connect with family
| members they couldn't regularly see due to the pandemic. They
| don't even own cell phones.
| Jonanin wrote:
| I'm impressed by the extent to which people actually believe
| media narratives match reality.
| nipponese wrote:
| This is not just a PR spin. Lying in their SEC filings is
| actionable.
| Permit wrote:
| That's not what they mean. They are alluding to negative
| press about Facebook which has led some to believe that
| Facebook is broadly disliked.
|
| In reality, it seems that people are completely fine with
| Facebook.
| function_seven wrote:
| It's really ironic when you think about it. One of the
| things people hate on FB for is enabling echo chambers in
| online discourse. That FB has this corrosive effect
| because it amplifies toxic content and radicalizes users
| who get pushed further and further from the mainstream.
|
| But us FB haters don't always realize that we're also in
| a bubble or echo chamber when discussing it. We see
| nothing but negative opinions on the company and don't
| realize that the larger world doesn't share these
| thoughts.
|
| There are so many other topics I see this applying to.
| Amazon work conditions; whether Apple should scan for
| CSAM client-side; the whole Chappelle thing.
|
| I'm a case in point. After a decade of ignoring
| Instagram, I'm now a solid DAU[1]. I probably see a dozen
| ad impressions each day; I know I've clicked through a
| handful in the last month. I do what I can to
| compartmentalize it from the rest of my online identity,
| but when looking at their growth metrics, I'm one of them
| in the 3rd quarter.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28360371
| [deleted]
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