Meta Platforms Inc (META)

[MissionIR]

Facebook Vows to Sacrifice Growth for Secure Operations

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Facebook Inc. extended its dominance in online advertising in the third quarter but said it would sacrifice some future growth to invest more heavily in its safety and security operations to address the growing scrutiny of its power and influence.

The social-media giant reported a 79% jump in third-quarter profit on Wednesday, the same day lawmakers grilled executives from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google during congressional hearings that focused on alleged Russian propagandists' activity during the election. Facebook and Google together capture the bulk of the growth in digital advertising.

Facebook plans to double the number of employees and contractors who handle safety and security issues to 20,000 by the end of 2018. It is also redoubling security-focused engineering efforts in some areas and building new artificial-intelligence systems to detect what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg described as "bad content and bad actors." Facebook's 2018 expenses could rise as much as 60% compared with 2017.

"I am dead serious about this," Mr. Zuckerberg told investors. "I've directed our teams to invest so much in security on top of the other investments we're making that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward."

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