Investing in Facebook (Meta) Stock (META)

On Aug. 19, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a new antitrust lawsuit against Meta after its original one filed in December 2020 was thrown out in June 2021. In its revised lawsuit, the FTC alleges that Meta illegally sought to suppress competition by acquiring potential competitors, including messaging platform WhatsApp and photo-sharing app Instagram. The FTC is seeking to force Meta to unwind these acquisitions, and accuses Meta of using its dominance in social media to prevent third-party app developers from accessing its platform. Meta filed a motion on Oct. 4, 2021, to dismiss the agency's latest lawsuit, arguing that it still lacked evidence of anticompetitive behavior.

On Feb. 24, 2021, the Australian government passed legislation that effectively requires Meta's Facebook and Alphabet's Google platforms to pay news publishers for use of their content on the tech giants' platforms. The law forces the tech companies and news publishers to submit to binding arbitration if they cannot reach a deal on terms of payment.

The Australian court decision is prompting other countries to take similar actions. European news publishers are lobbying the European Union (EU) to pass similar legislation that would require tech giants to pay for their news content at an agreed-on price. News publishers want a clause that forces major tech companies enter into binding arbitration if they fail to agree on terms of payment for content. They want the clause inserted in EU legislation that was introduced in December 2020. Called the Digital Markets Act, the legislation aims to curb the power of giant tech companies.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen was a Meta employee until May 2021. She has provided a stream of company documents to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS "60 Minutes," and other organizations to show what she says are deep flaws at the giant social network. That includes not only the Facebook platform, but also Meta's smaller platforms including Instagram, which is heavily used by teens. In her news interviews and Congressional testimony, Haugen has criticized the company's focus on "angry, polarizing divisive content" as a way to boost engagement and profits. She says the platform's flaws are detrimental to the safety of children and democracy.

Haugen joined the company in June 2019 and served on the Civic Integrity team, which focused on the platform's impact on global elections. She says she left the company earlier this year because she became frustrated with the company's lack of willingness to accept initiatives that would address the platform's flaws and improve the safety of the platform's users.

In spring 2021, Haugen contacted John Tye, the founder of legal nonprofit organization Whistleblower Aid. She asked him about obtaining legal protection and the best course of action for making public thousands of pages of internal Meta documents. Tye agreed to represent her and Haugen filed for legal whistleblower protection with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Haugen's identity was revealed for the first time on Oct. 3, 2021 in an interview on 60 Minutes. Two days later she testified extensively before Congress.

No, it has not.

No, it does not pay a dividend.

Meta has a dual class structure.

As of Oct 21, 2022, Meta had 2,248,672,204 shares of class A common stock outstanding. The stock represents one vote per share and trades under the ticker "META" on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

Also as of Oct. 21, 2022, Meta had 402,876,470 shares of class B common stock outstanding. The class B stock represents 10 votes per share and is owned by Zuckerberg, management, and directors. This gives Zuckerberg and his management effective control of the company.

Facebook was founded in 2004. Its four co-founders, Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, were students at Harvard University at the time.

Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is Meta's CEO and chairman. He founded Facebook, the precursor to Meta, with three other classmates while a student at Harvard University. He is ranked 15th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans with a net worth of $41 billion, as of Nov. 23, 2022.

As of Sept. 30, 2022, Facebook's monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.96 billion. Meta defines an MAU as a registered and logged-in Facebook user who visited the Facebook platform or used its Messenger application within the past 30 days as of the date of measurement. Meta uses MAUs to gauge the size of its global active user community.