Despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook makes $3Billion profit in 3-months

Facebook’s quarterly sales rose by over $3 billion despite the privacy breaching scandal. The company said that revenues rose to $11.9bn in the first three months of the year, compared to $8bn previously.

Founder, Mark Zuckerberg said: “despite facing important challenges, our community and business are off to a strong start in 2018. We are taking a broader view of our responsibility and investing to make sure our services are used for good. But we also need to keep building new tools to help people connect, strengthen our communities, and bring the world closer together.”

Facebook said that its advertising revenue rose to $11.7bn in the three months to the end of March, compared to $7.8bn in the same period a year ago. First quarter profits also grew, reaching $4.9bn compared to $3bn last year. Facebook said the average number of daily active users over March had risen to 1.45 billion, a 13% increase year-on-year.

The average number of monthly active users for March also rose by 13%, to 2.2 billion, and the number of staff saw a steep 48% increase to 27,742. Facebook had in March faced a controversy over yielding millions of users’ data to Cambridge Analytica which reportedly manipulated it during U.S President Donald Trump’s electioneering in 2016.