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Capstone Wealth Management Group Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm bought 3,317 shares of the social networking company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,869,000. Meta Platforms comprises 1.1% of Capstone Wealth Management Group Inc.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 19th largest holding.

Other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC raised its stake in Meta Platforms by 17.4% during the 1st quarter. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC now owns 18,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $10,299,000 after buying an additional 2,670 shares during the last quarter. Keybank National Association OH lifted its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 15.7% during the 4th quarter. Keybank National Association OH now owns 133,798 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $88,319,000 after buying an additional 18,169 shares during the period. WMS Group LLC purchased a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth $876,000. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after buying an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Czech National Bank grew its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 4.9% in the second quarter. Czech National Bank now owns 625,079 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $352,101,000 after acquiring an additional 29,411 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets META has been the subject of a number of research reports. Raymond James Financial upped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $825.00 to $850.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 21st. Citigroup dropped their target price on Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. KeyCorp cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $790.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Wedbush reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $671.00 to $595.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $640.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.32.

Check Out Our Latest Report on Meta Platforms Meta Platforms Price Performance NASDAQ META opened at $549.90 on Monday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $593.51 and its 200 day moving average is $614.77. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $790.80. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 2.23. The company has a market capitalization of $1.40 trillion, a PE ratio of 20.71, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.94 and a beta of 1.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The company had revenue of $60.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $7.14 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current year.

Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Investors of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a dividend of $0.525 per share. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s payout ratio is 7.91%.

Key Meta Platforms News Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Pocket in the U.S., an AI-powered app that lets users create and share interactive games through text prompts. The product could increase engagement and expand Meta’s consumer AI ecosystem. Meta brings Pocket to U.S. users Positive Sentiment: Meta introduced a Mac app for Meta AI with system-wide dictation and screen-aware assistance. The company is also pricing its new Muse Code coding agent below Anthropic and OpenAI offerings, potentially helping it attract developers and build AI adoption. Meta AI launches Mac app Positive Sentiment: Meta’s core advertising business remains strong, with quarterly revenue rising 28% year over year to $60.8 billion. AI-related improvements to recommendations and ad delivery are supporting engagement, clicks and conversion efficiency. Meta drawdown analysis Neutral Sentiment: Meta is contesting the Federal Trade Commission’s effort to revive monopoly charges. The company argues that Facebook and Instagram users increasingly see recommended content rather than posts from friends, a defense that could influence the case’s regulatory implications. Meta fights FTC monopoly charges Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, CFO Susan Li and insider Curtis Mahoney sold shares worth roughly $10.3 million in aggregate under pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plans. The transactions are limited as discretionary signals but may still affect investor sentiment. Meta insider transaction filing Negative Sentiment: Child-safety and social-media addiction litigation is intensifying. Testimony alleging that some safety tools were “designed to fail” raises the possibility of major damages, mandated product changes, restrictions on engagement features and pressure on advertising monetization. Meta social media lawsuit trial Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that heavier AI capital spending will depress second-half free cash flow and increase financial pressure. Those concerns follow Meta’s quarterly EPS miss, despite its revenue beat, and have contributed to the stock’s year-to-date weakness. Meta stock investment analysis Insider Buying and Selling In other Meta Platforms news, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total transaction of $4,379,184.00. Following the sale, the chief technology officer owned 828 shares in the company, valued at approximately $462,024. This trade represents a 90.46% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, August 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 1,517 shares in the company, valued at $910,200. This represents a 45.33% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 38,502 shares of company stock worth $22,603,485 in the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

About Meta Platforms (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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Meta’s business can be boiled down to four words that begin with the letter H: hook, hold, harvest, hide, according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company.

The owner of Facebook and Instagram “hooks” in users, “holds” them on its platforms for as long as possible, “harvests” their data and then “hides” the truth from the public, she argued.

“Meta’s business model worked especially well for kids,” said Megan O’Neill, a lawyer for the state of California.

Her accusation opened the blockbuster trial against the US tech company on Tuesday in Oakland, California, just north of Meta’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. California has joined 28 other US states in suing the £1tn ($1.36tn) company for allegedly designing addictive products that lead to children being harmed.

Lennon Torres of Heat Initiative holds a banner with the names of young people who died as a result of social media outside the Ronald V Dellums federal building on 18 August. Photograph: Noah Berger/APEight jurors heard from O’Neill and attorneys for Meta this week, along with testimony from former employees and a psychologist. The lawsuit centers on allegations that the company violated US federal child privacy laws and state-level consumer protection laws by collecting data on children under the age of 13 without parental permission. Over the course of the trial, the jury is additionally expected to hear from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.

The threat to Meta is existential. If the company is found liable, damages could be as high as $200bn – an amount equivalent to the company’s 2025 annual revenue. The states are also asking that Meta be forced to change the design of its products to make them safer for children, which could have permanent effects on the company’s business model and how its social media platforms operate.

Meta has denied all allegations. Liza Crenshaw, a spokesperson for the company, said: “Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”

During opening statements, Paul Schmidt, an attorney for Meta, said there is “no dispute” people can struggle with social media, but that Meta had “come up with tools to try and address that”. He added the company does not allow children under the age of 13 to register for accounts on its social networks and that it had disabled more than 1m accounts of those young users.

Paul Schmidt, lead attorney for Meta, leaves the courthouse as Meta is on trial over social media addiction in Oakland on 19 August. Photograph: Karl Mondon/AFP/Getty ImagesThe trial is expected to last six to eight weeks. The proceedings will be led by attorneys for the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The jury’s role is advisory, which means they will give recommendations to the presiding judge, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will make the final decision on the verdict and damages.

Meta faces thousands of similar US lawsuits brought by families, school districts and other attorneys general. The company lost the first two of those cases to go to trial in March. In the first, the company was ordered to pay nearly $1bn to the state of New Mexico for allowing child sexual exploitation on its platforms; and in the second, it was found liable for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked one young woman and was ordered to pay her more than $4m.

The star witness to take the stand in the trial’s first week was Arturo Béjar, a safety engineer at Meta who worked there in two separate stints between 2009 and 2021. Since leaving, Béjar has been an outspoken critic of the company, testifying before a US Senate committee and serving as an expert witness in other cases that involve social media’s harm to children.

In Oakland, Béjar testified that his motivation for pursuing solutions for harms to children was his own teenage daughter’s treatment on Instagram. He said she received unwanted sexual advances and photos of male genitals as well as misogynistic insults. Later, she told her father that reporting these abuses through Instagram’s established processes was either ineffective or not possible.

“Meta is taking a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ strategy” when it comes to child safety, Béjar testified.

Arturo Bejar, a former Meta safety engineer and consultant, leaves the courthouse as Meta faces trial over claims that they illegally collected and used children’s data. Photograph: Manuel Orbegozo/ReutersBéjar said that his job often included briefing Zuckerberg and that he had spoken with the CEO more than 100 times in the course of his work.

During Béjar’s testimony, attorneys for the government showed the jury an email he sent Zuckerberg in 2021, which outlined a survey he had conducted of teens’ experiences on Instagram. The results showed 51% of users said “yes” to having bad or harmful experiences within the previous seven days and that content was taken down only 0.02% of the time.

Béjar testified he sent that data to Zuckerberg because, “in my experience, when Mark makes something a priority, mountains move.”

“Did he ever respond to you?” the attorney asked.

“No,” Béjar replied. “I didn’t hear back from him.”

Meta fought to bar Béjar from testifying at the trial, filing a series of motions to strike his exhibits and prevent him from taking the stand, all of which were rejected. In an email to reporters on Wednesday, Meta continued to hound him. The company’s statement said Béjar’s testimony was not credible or reliable because he overinflated his role at the company and took credit for work he didn’t do.

After Béjar’s testimony wrapped, the jury heard recorded depositions from Elena Davis and Natalie Troxel – both former user experience researchers for Meta. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, also briefly took the stand, with testimony scheduled to continue next week.

Meta Platforms Inc. (META, Financials), the parent of Facebook and Instagram, continues to spend aggressively on artificial intelligence, but Bernstein thinks investors may be looking too much at the expense and not enough at what could go right.

Analyst Mark Shmulik maintained an Outperform rating and $800 price target, saying Meta's core business is still robust enough to support the AI drive. Revenue is still growing roughly 28% year over year, with early evidence of AI monetization starting to come in business messaging, paid model APIs and subscriptions.

That matters because Meta doesn't need every AI project to be a big moneymaker. Bernstein, however, believes that one good consumer AI success may do a lot to improve mood among investors and make today's spending look a lot more justified.

There is still a lot of execution risk. Meta is likely to continue heavy expenditure on AI models, personnel and infrastructure at least through 2027. But the valuation is helping.

Bernstein thinks the stock already represents much of the uncertainties around that investment, at about 15 times next year's earnings. The scenario for investors is really simple: Meta's primary advertising engine is still growing rapidly, and the business is starting to show that AI might someday lead to new sources of income, not just a cost center.

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Journalist Alex Heath, co-founder of the Sources newsletter and a longtime Meta chronicler, argued on CNBC this morning that investors are underestimating how close Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is to shipping frontier-class AI models. His reporting, drawn from a recent conversation with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reframes the debate around Meta’s aggressive capital spending at a moment when the stock is under pressure.

Heath said Zuckerberg told him the reason he published his recent AI policy op-ed was to establish his values before Meta unveils more powerful AI models: “He told me… that the reason he wrote that is he wanted to state the values he has before Meta releases much more capable models in the near future.“

Heath interprets that framing as a strategic signal about Meta’s direction. “That, to me, was a pretty definitive statement that he thinks that’s going to happen in the near future, and you’ve seen them catch up pretty quickly over the last year.”

Why Investors Are Punishing Meta’s $145 Billion AI Bet Meta shares currently trade around $546.35 as of this morning, with the stock down 15.46% over the past month and 17.14% year to date. The pullback followed a Q2 2026 earnings report with higher-than-expected capex costs.

Q2 capital expenditures were $31.1 billion, and management raised the 2026 capex outlook to $130-$145 billion. Total 2026 expenses are guided to $165 to $169 billion. Free cash flow fell to just $784 million in the quarter, a figure that has fueled Reddit debates.

Q2 revenue reached $60.8 billion, up 28%, but GAAP operating margin compressed to 31%, and diluted EPS of $6.18 came in below Street consensus. A widely shared post argued investors were looking at the wrong number, noting that operating cash flow still grew 25%.

What All That Capex Spending May Actually Be Buying What, specifically, is all this spending buying? On the Q2 call, Zuckerberg defended proprietary model development directly. “Right now, the open source models are not as strong as the frontier models,” he said, adding that “having kind of sovereignty over building your own models is going to be an important part of that stack going forward.”

Zuckerberg also said Meta is “in the process of scaling much larger and more advanced models” beyond the early scaling ladder of MuseSpark 1.1 and related releases. He argued the real prize is a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly.

What to Watch Next Meta still needs to prove that its unprecedented AI spending can produce frontier models and attractive financial returns. Zuckerberg’s comments offer no firm timeline, but they suggest the company may be closer to a breakthrough than investors realize.

With Meta trading at 19 times forward earnings after a 17% year-to-date decline, any convincing model announcement at September’s Connect event on September 23 could quickly change the narrative. Analysts have an average price target of $754.14, with 47 Buy and 8 Strong Buy ratings against 7 Hold calls.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Meta Platforms' (META +0.43%) second-quarter numbers tell a strange story: The business itself is booming, but so much of its cash flow is being consumed by its AI build-out that there's little left over.

Free cash flow fell 91% year over year to just $784 million, even as revenue jumped and operating cash flow exceeded $31 billion. That combination should make long-term investors pause.

Meta reported Q2 revenue of about $60.8 billion, up 28%, with advertising sales rising 27% as AI tools improved ad targeting and content recommendations. Operating cash flow grew 25% to $31.86 billion, which is exactly what you want to see from a strong platform business.

The problem is on the other side of the ledger. Capital expenditures (capex) on servers, data centers, and network gear surged 83% to roughly $31.1 billion. Almost every dollar the business generated went straight back out the door again.

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Meta's early-year moves This was not a one-quarter blip. Earlier this year, Meta raised its full-year 2026 capex guidance to a range of $130 billion to $145 billion, up from an already huge $72.2 billion in 2025 and a prior forecast range of $115 billion to $135 billion. Analysts and infrastructure trackers now talk about Meta spending more in 2026 on AI data centers and compute than it did in 2024 and 2025 combined, with tens of gigawatts of new capacity planned to train and serve Llama models and other "Meta Superintelligence" projects.

Image source: Getty Images.

Heavy investment is not automatically bad. AI is already boosting Meta's ad business, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg points to more than 1 million businesses using AI agents on WhatsApp and Messenger each week.

The worry is timing and scale. Sell-side models now anticipate that Meta's free cash flow will turn negative in 2026 and drop by tens of billions of dollars more in 2027 as the company's capex continues to run ahead of its cash generation. That would be a dramatic swing for a company that produced $43.6 billion of free cash flow in 2025.

What about Meta investors? For shareholders, the risk is that Meta has locked itself into noncancelable infrastructure and component commitments of well over $200 billion without a clear, near-term line of sight into how much incremental profit those data centers and GPUs will generate.

If the AI products built on top of this spend do not lead to sustainably higher margins or new cash-rich businesses, Meta Platforms' shareholders could find themselves in a bad place. They would own a company that looks more like a capital-intensive utility than a high-margin software platform, with less flexibility to dial back its spending if conditions change.

That is why a 91% collapse in free cash flow in the middle of a period of strong revenue growth is more than a quirky headline. It is a reminder that the AI race is a balance-sheet race, and that not every participant will emerge with the same cash resilience it started with.

Mark Zuckerberg and his minions at Meta had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when child safety issues arose and preferred to turn a blind eye to protect profits, according to scorching testimony from a former employee on the second day of the historic trial Wednesday.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety researcher who has become one of its biggest critics, told jurors in California federal court that Zuckerberg did little to address the harmful effects of Facebook and Instagram despite having near-unchecked power as the company’s CEO.

“You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids,” Béjar said on the witness stand.

A courtroom sketch of Arturo Bejar during his testimony. REUTERS He was the first witness called by the coalition of 29 state attorneys general who have accused Meta of causing a teen mental health crisis through addictive app design that fueled anxiety, depression and even suicide – all while illegally harvesting kids’ data without parental consent.

The state AGs are seeking to force Meta to change key features of its apps and to impose major penalties on Meta over its alleged misdeeds. Lawyers for the states said the damages could approach $200 billion, while Meta has alleged the actual number could reach an astronomical $1.4 trillion.

Béjar, who led a safety-focused team at Meta from 2009 to 2015 and later returned as a consultant from 2019 to 2021, accused Zuckerberg of lying about the company’s commitment to protecting kids in public statements.

“I felt that he created a false and misleading impression of Facebook’s commitment to young people,” said Béjar, who estimated that he spoke to Zuckerberg about safety issues at least 100 times during his tenure.

Béjar was a safety researcher at Meta. REUTERS The researcher added that Meta had the capability to detect underage users who were evading safeguards but had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to protect its bottom line.

“Where the youngest kids are is where the users are going to be in the future,” Béjar said.

He previously served as a key witness in a separate trial brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, where he emotionally described how his then-16-year-old daughter received sick messages from pervs including “unsolicited penis pictures” shortly after she joined Instagram.

Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify during the trial. Getty Images Under cross examination by a Meta attorney in the current trial, Béjar admitted that he was caught off guard by the extent of the risks his daughter would face when he allowed her to join Instagram.

“I kept an eye on how distressing it was for her,” Béjar said. “She got a good following, at the price of harm.”

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The state AGs’ trial is expected to last roughly six weeks. Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are each expected to testify during the proceedings.

Meta has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and accused the state AGs of seeking penalties that go far beyond the scope of their case.

During opening statements on Tuesday, Meta’s lawyer Paul Schmidt argued that Zuckerberg and his allies have worked to improve Facebook and Instagram and taken many steps to protect kids online – including parental oversight tools and time limits for social media use.

With Post wires

“I’ve had one person who told me that their intentions were creepy,” a man tells me over a video call, on condition of anonymity. He’s based in Los Angeles, and while we speak, he eats what appears to be tuna directly out of the can. “He said: ‘I go to strip clubs, and I want to record the strippers … Normally I put my phone in my chest pocket, but the glasses are more convenient.’”

The man I’m talking to runs a business called Ghost Metas. He’s one of hundreds of vendors, easily discoverable online, who specialise in disabling the flashing LED light embedded in Meta’s smartglasses that blinks when wearers capture photos, videos and audio. After Ghost Metas disables the LED, it’s impossible for someone to know they’re being filmed.

He flips his camera over to show me his work bench, revealing painter’s tape, a drill, a hole puncher, a dental pick and a tube of resin. He says he’s worked on about 100 pairs of glasses, and that one pair only takes him about 15 to 20 minutes.

“In public, I don’t think we have privacy any more, period,” he says, when I ask whether what he’s doing feels wrong. “My argument is if you’re really worried about your privacy, don’t go outside.”

The success of Ghost Metas is parallel to the runaway success of Meta Glasses, designed in partnership with established glasses brands Ray-Ban and Oakley. Meta said that it sold roughly 7 million pairs in 2025 alone, practically tripling combined sales numbers from 2023 and 2024. Influencers, athletes and global celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth and Teyana Taylor have embraced the tech in sponsored posts and buzzy ads. The glasses mark a turnaround for a company that made big missteps by overinvesting in virtual reality “metaverses” and trailing behind in the AI race.

The most notable endorser has been Kylie Jenner who, in June, collaborated with Meta on her own line of AI glasses. “Hey Meta – take a picture,” Jenner commands her $399 Starfire glasses in an advertisement for the collab. Meta promises that users can ask Kylie’s glasses any question, and the AI will issue “every response in Kylie’s voice”.

The reality of how people are using the glasses has been less benign. They have been widely used for exploitation and privacy violations, much of which has been bragged about on social media by bad actors themselves. Online creators – primarily men – have used the glasses to troll boardwalks, college campuses, and streets outside bars in search of women to hit on, and then post the interactions. Some men have recorded overtly racist videos in which they enter massage parlors staffed by Asian women and ask for “happy ending” massages. Others have used the glasses to record bathing suit-clad women at the beach.

I’ve spoken with people who say Meta Glasses have been used to secretly record their private interactions, with one source describing an incident inside her house that she felt endangered her children.

Many of these videos are captured and posted online without the consent of their subjects, often by influencers who want to humiliate the subjects they’ve filmed.

To protect against this, on every pair of glasses there’s an LED light that’s supposed to let people know the glasses are recording. Meta makes assurances that the glasses won’t record when the LED light is blocked or obscured. But the man behind Ghost Metas says it’s easy to modify the glasses to block the light without triggering the refusal failsafe.

He acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of his clients have been men but he doesn’t agree that the glasses are only being used for spying. Many of his customers are parents, who he says tell him: “‘I want to record my kid, but every time the light’s on, the kid just keeps looking at the light.’” He also said he’s done several pairs for food delivery drivers and others with similar jobs, who have told him that they want to protect themselves from false claims of undelivered orders or unwanted harassment.

What Ghost Metas is doing clearly breaks the terms of service of Meta Glasses. But could Meta argue it’s an inversion of their appeal? Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who has positioned the glasses as a smartphone killer, said in September 2025 that “the promise of glasses is to preserve this sense of presence that you have with other people”. Smartglasses bring the functionality of smartphones, cameras included, into every moment. Several people I spoke to say that even when the LED is functioning as intended it can be subtle and difficult to spot from far away, especially if you aren’t aware of how smartglasses work. Others shared that they sought out the glasses to capture more “natural” footage of those around them, explicitly because people act differently when they know they’re being recorded. As Meta themselves put in their advertising materials: “Record life as you live it – every detail, every angle.”

Mark Zuckerberg records video using the Orion augmented reality (AR) glasses, triggering a small light on the frames, during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, in September 2024. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesOther tech giants have tried – and failed – to successfully market smartglasses. In 2013, Google released Google Glass, but discontinued them in 2015 amid backlash that resulted in a journalist getting assaulted in the street for wearing a pair. Snapchat tried for years to push Spectacles, first released in 2016, to no avail. (It’s now slated to release augmented-reality glasses called Specs later this year, though between their awkwardly bulbous appearance and $2,195 price tag, they may be dead on arrival). Apple’s Vision Pro, meanwhile, has seen disappointing sales since its release in early 2024. Beyond headwear, there have been products like an always-listening version of Amazon’s Halo Band bracelet, which the Washington Post once called “the most invasive tech we’ve ever tested”. Amazon scrapped the always-on microphone in 2021, again in response to people finding the update wildly creepy, and the Halo line was discontinued entirely by 2023.

So why did Meta Glasses succeed when so many of their competitors were deemed creepy and ugly? One big answer seems to be fashion.

Unlike their predecessors, Meta Glasses have familiar designer names behind them. EssilorLuxottica, the Italian corporation that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley, is an eyewear titan that raked in about $33.8bn in 2025, with about 12% of its overall sales to Ray-Ban.

“Ray-Ban is fashionable in a perennial sort of way, not a fleeting sort of way,” said Amy Odell, fashion journalist and author of the Back Row newsletter. Zuckerberg, she added, “is right that in order to get these things to sell, they do have to be great glasses first. And you really can’t go wrong by going to the most iconic sunglasses brand.”

Meta also makes a number of privacy assurances about the glasses, promising users they are “designed for privacy” and that Meta doesn’t have access to recordings made by using the glasses. However, a joint investigation by the Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten revealed that Meta was, in fact, storing recordings made by glasses wearers. The papers interviewed Kenyan whistleblowers working for the controversial content moderation sweatshop Sama, which is subcontracted by Meta to sort through and annotate content that may be fed into Meta’s AI models.

“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” one contractor told the Swedish newspapers. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.” Other Sama employees shared stories of reviewing content collected while glasses wearers were having sex, looking at their or their partner’s naked body, or viewing sensitive documents that revealed personal identifying information. The reporting quickly prompted a class action lawsuit in San Francisco federal court, which alleges that Meta engaged in false advertising in relation to its privacy assurances.

In a statement, Meta said that “unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience … we take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy.”

The lawyers bringing the class action disagree. “These products aren’t designed for user control and privacy,” said Ryan Clarkson, whose firm filed the suit. “In my opinion, they’re designed to maximise profits, and to turn every person who buys one into a Trojan horse of surveillance.”

‘I felt extremely violated’Nonconsensual recordings can happen to anyone, anywhere. People have been secretly recorded in their workplace; one lawyer told the Guardian that he was covertly filmed by potential clients during a free consultation. Some Meta Glasses wearers have recorded videos of trips to hospitals and children’s dentist offices and shared them online.

You could even be covertly recorded in your own home – as was the case for Brek Mettra, a mother of two in Utah who was secretly filmed in her house during a transaction with a local vintage clothing seller. After the pair connected on Facebook Marketplace (also run by Meta), the seller met Mettra at her home to buy a T-shirt. Unbeknownst to her, he had used Meta Glasses to record their exchange, which he then uploaded to social media as content to promote his business.

Mettra said it wasn’t until a “random guy” in Philadelphia contacted her to inquire about a T-shirt he had seen in the clip that she knew the video even existed.

In the video, a copy of which was reviewed by the Guardian, Mettra’s face is visible, as are the faces of her two very young children. Though Mettra wasn’t tagged, the video revealed her identifying information: the vintage seller had paid Mettra using Venmo, and her full name was visible on her Venmo profile, which was how the stranger in Philly found her. “I honestly felt extremely violated,” said Mettra, who added that she does not remember seeing an LED light on the glasses.

After making multiple requests for him to take the video down, the seller deleted the post once Mettra warned him that she had contacted Instagram. “Please, for my children and myself I really hope you delete it,” Mettra pleaded in one message to the seller, which was reviewed by the Guardian. The seller didn’t respond to a request for comment but he has posted several similar recordings across multiple Instagram and TikTok accounts, with a tag included in his Instagram captions noting that the videos have been recorded with “Ray-Ban Meta glasses”.

Others say they’ve been harassed by Meta Glasses wearers in spaces they had previously felt safe in. Karina and Kyle, a young couple who asked to be identified by their first names to protect their privacy, are avid ravers who, earlier this year, had a disturbing encounter with a man who was using Meta Glasses to record young women’s bodies at a large EDM festival in Las Vegas.

The couple initially bumped into the man on the dancefloor, where they caught him leering at Karina’s breasts through a pair of Ray-Bans. They were close enough to notice that an LED on the glasses was flashing, signaling that the man was filming. Asked to stop recording, the man stormed away. A little while later, though, they saw the man again. This time, he was sitting on the ground beneath two bikini-clad young women, who were perched on tall barstools as they watched the show. Glasses on, the man stared at their bodies from below. It wasn’t until he took out his phone and attempted to take additional recordings, the couple said, that people around him realised he was recording and notified the women.

Karina is still unsettled by the knowledge that nonconsensual recordings of her may be out there. “It’s really disgusting … there are so many possibilities of what people could do,” she said.

Meta refuted to the Guardian that the main purpose of the glasses is to make unnoticeable recordings. But each victim of nonconsensual recordings called attention to the innocuity of the glasses, and how much more difficult – if not impossible – the glasses were to spot compared with handheld cameras or smartphones. And Mettra, for her part, said she doesn’t remember seeing a recording light. “If he would’ve pulled out a camera, I could have said no, or leave if you’re going to do that,” said Mettra. “It opened my eyes to be a little bit less trusting in people.”

“I feel like that’s the whole point of these glasses,” added Karina, “that they’re inconspicuous.”

‘A red line society must not cross’Being secretly recorded is currently the primary fear associated with Meta Glasses. But covert recordings may just be the first step in a more sophisticated surveillance apparatus integrated with another deeply controversial technology: facial recognition.

In February, the New York Times reported on an internal Meta Reality Labs document in which the company discussed its plans to integrate a facial recognition feature called “NameTag” into its smartglasses.

In the document, dated to May 2025, Meta said that it planned to launch NameTag “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns”.

In response to the Times’ reporting, Meta said that NameTag was something it was “still thinking through” and promised to “take a thoughtful approach if and before we roll anything out”.

A few months later, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued an open letter to Meta signed by 75 different organizations condemning the integration of a feature like NameTag into smartglasses as “a red line society must not cross”.

By then, though, NameTag was already further along than was publicly known. A June Wired investigation revealed that latent code for NameTag was secretly rolled to Meta smartglasses as early as January 2026. While technically unreleased and inaccessible to consumers, the code contained the architecture for a system that would save faces viewed through Meta smartglasses as biometric “faceprints” and store them on users’ devices.

“You don’t put code like this in your app unless you’re planning to release that feature very soon,” said Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Threat Lab, who independently reviewed the NameTag code discovered by Wired.

A few days after it was discovered, Meta quietly deleted the inactive code.

The privacy light embedded within Meta’s smartglasses. Photograph: Carlos Barría/ReutersTechnically, building facial recognition into smartglasses isn’t difficult. In late 2024, two Harvard dropouts were able to embed the facial recognition library PimEyes into a pair of Meta Ray-Bans; coupled with help from a large language model, the glasses were successfully able to connect strangers’ faces to their name, job, social media, address, contact information, information about family members and other personal data. (Meta told the Guardian that “these students simply used publicly available facial recognition software, PimEyes, on a computer that would work with photos taken on any camera, phone or recording device … Meta’s AI glasses do not have facial recognition technology.”)

But just last week, 404 Media reported that Meta filed a patent for a facial recognition feature for its AI glasses that would identify people in the frame and use that information to create highlight reels of that person or people. The example given in Meta’s patent was identifying and creating videos of guests at a dinner party.

According to Kade Crockford, the director for technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, the uncovered NameTag code signals a step toward a radical transformation of our existing privacy landscape – and they’ve “been dreading this moment for 20 years”.

Meta is keen to emphasise that their glasses are uniquely beneficial for blind and low-vision people, many of whom say the tech has been transformational for their daily independence and safety. While discussing NameTag in a recent podcast interview, Meta’s CTO, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, emphasised that putting facial recognition into smartglasses could offer additional support to people living with vision or memory disabilities.

But the reasons to not introduce unchecked facial recognition into smartglasses are vast, privacy advocates have warned. Citizens attending protests could wind up with their names and faces being sucked into a database. To that end, ICE officers have already been caught using Meta Glasses to surveil demonstrators, and earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security requested millions in order to build facial recognition into smartglasses. A woman could brush off an advance by a stranger in a bar, or on a bus, or at a workplace, only for that stranger to already know her name, which they may use to find her address and other information. Other vulnerable demographics – LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color – may also be stalked, harassed and targeted by abusers receiving assistance from facial recognition.

Asked about Meta’s facial recognition plans, a spokesperson for Meta said that “we’re exploring these types of features as people regularly express interest in seeing them. Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything. If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about – we are not building a central face database.”

A brewing backlashAs Meta promotes the glasses with paid influencer content and high-profile partnerships, resistance against the tech is intensifying. Activists recently plastered London bus stops with anti-glasses guerilla ads, one of which depicted the infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in the Ray-Bans with the tagline “glasses for people who don’t do consent”. Some glasses owners say they’ve started leaving the spectacles at home because they don’t want to be associated with creeps. A professor in Germany built an app called Nearby Glasses, a free, open-source service that detects when smartglasses are close by and issues an alert. And during a July performance at a music festival in Madrid sponsored by Ray-Ban, the singer Lorde told the crowd that “you don’t know if someone’s wearing sunglasses, or if they’re wearing those fucked-up fucking … can I just say, for the record, fuck the glasses! Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”

In early July, Meta announced that it would push an update to detect when an LED light has been “physically tampered with or destroyed” and stop people filming using those glasses. Two months after we spoke, Ghost Metas decided to pause his business as a result of the update. “Too much risk,” said the now former LED disabler. One client, he added, had gotten in touch to say that his glasses were no longer working.

“People use our glasses because they’re genuinely helpful … for those wearing them and the people around them. Trust matters,” a spokesperson for Meta told the Guardian when asked about disabling the LED. “That’s why we built privacy into our AI glasses from the ground up. Every pair has a capture LED that blinks when you take a photo or video that you can save or share, it can’t be turned off, and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera is disabled.”

But many other LED disablers told the Guardian they’re still working, even after Meta’s update.

“The new update hasn’t been impacting the glasses at all,” said one disabler in early August, after Facebook had announced the update. Since the update, he said he’s tampered with the lights on the Gen 2 and Kylie Jenner models, and that “they work fine.”

“I’ve done hundreds and [only] one person is having problems out of hundreds, so I chalk that up to him being a dumbass,” said another. “Mine are working perfect still.”

A billboard advertising Kylie Jenner’s Meta Glasses collaboration in Los Angeles, California, on 27 June 2026. Photograph: Barry King/AlamyOthers are still able to get by with lower-risk alternatives to physically drilling out the LED – including an Engadget journalist, who found they were able to successfully block out the recording light with a $2 sticker.

Things have gotten so bad that Instagram, which is also owned by Meta, is publicly warning that the glasses are being used to harass people and warns about posting content from Meta Glasses. “If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, said in a video announcing a crackdown on harassing content. “We’re trying to fight that every way we can.”

As part of this purported crackdown, Instagram deactivated the accounts of several pickup artists with large followings. As of publishing this story, however, dozens of pickup artist videos filmed with Meta Glasses are still easily discoverable on Instagram, clearly marked by captions such as “POV MILF RIZZ”, “POV LATINA RUNDOWN” and “POV COLLEGE RIZZ”. After we notified Meta to multiple active accounts dedicated to pickup artist content, the accounts were deactivated.

Though taking pictures and videos in public spaces is generally legal in the US, existing laws regarding two-party consent and wiretapping, particularly on the state level, may have rendered some nonconsensual recordings captured by Meta Glasses illegal. (Of course, victims would generally have to know that recordings exist in order to take action against them.) Even so, the passage of meaningful federal privacy regulation in the US that would take policy out of the hands of corporations, replacing patchworked state laws and setting standards that would shift the regulatory burden to companies instead of individuals.

“The argument for federal privacy legislation is stronger every day, and Congress’s seeming commitment to do nothing is also stronger,” said Quintin. “I think privacy is a human right, and we should expect it. We used to expect it, and I don’t know why we as a society have largely just given up on that. I think we should demand it, and demand that Congress take action and regulate privacy.”

But Meta has proven a market, and other tech companies are chasing. Google has a partnership with Samsung and the designer eyewear company Gentle Monster, and is also working on a collaboration with the affordable glasses-maker Warby Parker. And Apple is not only working on its own glasses, but is also rumoured to be infusing cameras into its popular AirPods designed to feed an AI system information about the wearer’s surroundings, according to Bloomberg. Across Silicon Valley, AI hardware startups – including many designing AI wearables beyond glasses – abound.

Meta itself is mining deeper into higher echelons of luxury fashion. In 2025 it released a limited-edition pair of smart Ray-Bans with the French clothing brand Coperni, and it’s due to release a pair of smartglasses designed in collaboration with Prada. (In February, Zuckerberg even sat front row at a Prada fashion show.) The fashion industry seems excited to make this new era of surveillance as chic as possible.

“We’re frogs in a boiling pot, and the temperature is getting hotter and hotter,” said Clarkson, the lawyer. “So here we have a leap in the erosion of our privacy rights through this slick technology that big tech promises will enrich our lives, make us more connected, smarter, more efficient – when instead it’s going to move us, by an order of magnitude, toward a far more surveilled state of existence.”

In the modern world, anonymity is a precious resource. If smartphones have made constant filming more acceptable, smartglasses are among a class of technologies that make it quieter – omnipresent, but less and less visible.

A pair of glasses suddenly come with endless question marks, and a humming fear that our presence in public spaces involves a Foucauldian forfeiture of privacy. When you feel like anyone could be filming you, you act like you’re always being filmed.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has prohibited its employees from wearing Meta’s smart glasses, the latest workplace to ban the devices out of privacy concerns.

In a memo about the policy on Tuesday, ICE said it considered the glasses, which can discreetly record video and audio, as a body-worn camera. As a result, “the use of Meta Glasses or similar devices could unintentionally capture, record, or transmit sensitive information, potentially compromising privacy and legal protections,” David Venturella, the agency’s acting director, wrote in the memo.

Under the policy, ICE said employees would be barred from wearing the Meta glasses in the “federal workspace.” The policy applied to all employees, not just its law enforcement officials, the agency said.

“Personally owned body-worn cameras and unauthorized recording are prohibited, as they always have been,” a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

Meta declined to comment.

ICE joins a growing number of organizations and workplaces to ban Meta’s smart glasses, which have become one of the company’s best-selling hardware products, even as they have raised privacy and surveillance concerns. Meta debuted the smart glasses in 2021, and has released versions in partnership with companies like Ray-Ban and Oakley.

The glasses feature a small camera above the eye frame that can record video and audio, and they emit a blinking white light while recording. New versions have an artificial intelligence assistant that can respond to voice commands and a project a tiny screen visible to the wearer in the corner of the eye frame.

Last month, New York became the first state to ban Meta’s smart glasses in its court buildings to “ensure that no one can be recorded surreptitiously.” Some retail stores and restaurants have also forbidden the devices, which have spawned an industry of content creators who film inside businesses, often without permission.

ICE does not have a partnership with Meta, but its agents have come under fire in the last year for wearing the company’s smart glasses to protests and during immigration raids. ICE initially told employees the glasses were banned in June, according to an internal email obtained by The New York Times.

In the Department of Homeland Security’s budget proposal in April, the agency requested $7.5 million to develop its own smart glasses prototype to help with immigration enforcement, including glasses that can “enable biometric identification of illegal aliens.”

The Times previously reported that Meta was working on adding facial recognition features to its smart glasses; the company has not made those features available. Privacy groups have raised concerns about facial recognition. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter signed by 77 organizations asking that Meta not include facial recognition in its glasses out of privacy and civil liberty concerns.

“Facial recognition technology built into inconspicuous consumer eyewear represents a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society,” the organization wrote. “Our concerns reflect the fundamental danger of the technology itself.”

The glasses have become a focal point of Meta’s A.I. ambitions. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has called smart glasses “the ideal form of superintelligence,” a powerful A.I. that the company is investing hundreds of billions to develop.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has heavily marketed new versions of its smart glasses, including with celebrities like Kylie Jenner and athletes who played in the World Cup.

As opening statements get underway in a landmark trial over claims that Meta Platforms (META.O) misled the public about the safety of Instagram and Facebook for young users and violated child privacy laws, one of the biggest fights in the case has already been resolved: whether a bipartisan group of ​U.S. states could present their claims together.

The states pushed for a single trial covering state consumer protection and federal privacy claims brought ‌by 29 attorneys general, while Meta argued for a series of smaller trials grouping states that have similar laws.

The fight was about more than courtroom logistics. The states argued that the case centers on company-wide decisions affecting young users across the country and seeks nationwide changes to Meta's platforms, and that jurors should hear a single story about Meta's actions. Meta countered that ​jurors should evaluate states' claims separately because the underlying laws differ and warned that a combined proceeding could blur important distinctions among the claims.

Ultimately, ​U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers adopted a hybrid approach for the multi-week trial, allowing Colorado, California, Kentucky and New ⁠Jersey to try their state law claims together, while also including the federal law claims brought by all of the states. Although Rogers will decide the case, ​she appointed an advisory jury whose findings may inform her final ruling.

The trial's outcome could help guide how the remaining states' claims are resolved, reshape how Facebook and Instagram ​operate, and force Meta to pay billions of dollars in penalties.

Meta has called the allegations unsubstantiated and said it stands by its work to protect teen users of its platforms.

'A PROJECTION OF UNITY'
Legal experts said in a case against a company as well-capitalized as Meta, a multistate coalition gives the states the ability to pool resources and share expertise, and it may ​improve their credibility with the jury and the judge. They said attorneys general have used the strategy repeatedly in cases against the tobacco and opioid industries to ​strengthen their bargaining power and to present evidence of conduct that allegedly affected consumers across the country.

“A jury will see all these states banding together to do this, and that ‌presents kind ⁠of like a projection of unity,” said Prentiss Cox, a former assistant state attorney general in Minnesota who is now a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. “Elected officials on different sides of a partisan world can agree that this is a problem that needs solving.”

The states' lawsuit, which was filed in 2023, stems from a multistate investigation into Instagram and Facebook's impact on young users. The states generally allege that Meta knowingly designed features in Instagram and Facebook to ​hook young users while assuring the public ​that the platforms were safe, conduct ⁠they argue violated state consumer protection laws.

A large portion of the states are also suing under a federal law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, claiming Meta failed to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from young users.

In pushing for ​smaller trials, Meta argued that a combined proceeding would require jurors to understand the different legal standards for each ​state claim, making it ⁠harder to fairly evaluate each one. The company also said it planned to defend against the claims with state-specific evidence, an approach it argued would be more difficult in a larger consolidated trial.

“The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement ahead of trial. "Rather than sticking to ⁠the facts ​or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout."

Kentucky Attorney General Russell ​Coleman called the case the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history.

“AGs are in the perfect position to get this done," Coleman said in a statement. "We did it with the Tobacco Settlement in the ​1990s. We did it with the companies behind the opioid crisis. We’ll do it again with Meta.”

Social media giant Meta is heading to court in a case brought by a group of state attorneys general who claim the company designed its social media platforms to be addictive and misled the public about potential risks.

The trial is expected to begin with opening statements on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland after the two sides went through the jury selection process last week and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers turned down Meta's request for the case to be dismissed. The trial is expected to last four to six weeks, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expected to testify.

Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey first filed the lawsuit in 2023 after a multistate investigation into the impact of Facebook and Instagram on young users. They argue that the platforms were designed to be addictive and that the company downplayed the potential impact on young people, while also alleging Meta violated federal law when it collected personal information from children.

Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey first filed the lawsuit in 2023 after a multistate investigation into the impact of Facebook and Instagram on young users. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has denied wrongdoing and disputes claims that its social media platforms caused the harm alleged by states. It also argues that "social media addiction" isn't an officially recognized psychiatric diagnosis, which will be a significant point of contention at trial.

FOUR STATES SEEKING $1.4 TRILLION IN PENALTIES IN CHILD SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION TRIAL, META SAYS

California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement last week after the court allowed the case to proceed, saying, "Meta designed a dangerous product for young users, knew it to be dangerous, and then lied to children, families, and the community about how dangerous it was."

A Meta spokesperson pushed back on the states' case against the company and said in a statement to FOX Business that the "limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate."

"The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification. Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout," the company spokesperson said, adding that the company stands by its "record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court."

Ticker Security Last Change Change % META META PLATFORMS INC. 589.85 -5.12 -0.86% Meta has argued that the damages sought by the state attorneys general could reach as high as $1.4 trillion, which is nearly the size of the company's market capitalization – though the AGs haven't disclosed the amount they plan to seek at trial and will likely do so once the trial begins.

NEW MEXICO COURT ORDERS META TO PAY $567M, OVERHAUL TEEN PROTECTIONS

Monte Mann, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale, told FOX Business in an interview that this will be a "bellwether case" for the theory that social media platforms were designed to be addictive and have harmful effects on young users.

Mann said that as someone who has tried cases like this one, he will be paying close attention to what internal Meta documents indicate about the company's knowledge of the allegedly compulsive nature of its products and their mental health impact, saying those documents "may be the star witness in the case."

"I will be very interested to see what the internal Meta, Facebook, Instagram documents say about what they knew of the compulsive nature of these products and services; when they knew it; whether they tried to enhance their design elements to take advantage of those things, what they disclosed to the public," he said.

Meta has argued that the damages sought by the state attorneys general could reach as high as $1.4 trillion. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Mann also noted that Judge Gonzalez Rogers appointed an advisory jury in the case, which can provide feedback and recommendations on community standards for children's use of social media that she may consider.

META, OTHER COMPANIES MUST FACE THOUSANDS OF LAWSUITS OVER CHILD SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION, APPEALS COURT RULES

The Oakland trial is the latest high-profile case involving social media companies like Meta, which have faced numerous lawsuits brought by individuals, school districts and state governments over the alleged impacts of social media use on children.

A ruling in another prominent case was delivered earlier this month when a state court in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $567 million and to overhaul its protections for teen users on Facebook and Instagram.

That followed a prior ruling from March which ordered Meta to pay $375 million for violating state law, with the company's total liability in the case at nearly $942 million.

Meta told FOX Business after the most recent ruling that it disagreed with the decision and vowed to appeal, explaining that the company is "confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

FOX Business' Michael Sinkewicz, Sumner Park and Reuters contributed to this report.

Altrafin AG cut its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 95.3% during the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 563 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 11,497 shares during the quarter. Altrafin AG’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $317,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of META. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 17.4% in the first quarter. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC now owns 18,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $10,299,000 after acquiring an additional 2,670 shares during the last quarter. Keybank National Association OH increased its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 15.7% in the 4th quarter. Keybank National Association OH now owns 133,798 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $88,319,000 after purchasing an additional 18,169 shares during the last quarter. WMS Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter valued at $876,000. Consolidated Investment Group LLC lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 61.2% during the 4th quarter. Consolidated Investment Group LLC now owns 7,900 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $5,215,000 after purchasing an additional 3,000 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 3.8% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after purchasing an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $589.85 on Monday. The stock has a market cap of $1.50 trillion, a PE ratio of 22.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a quick ratio of 2.23, a current ratio of 2.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 52-week low of $520.26 and a 52-week high of $796.25. The business has a 50-day moving average price of $595.94 and a 200 day moving average price of $620.04.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The firm had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $7.14 EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current year.

Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 15th were given a dividend of $0.525 per share. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 7.91%.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other Meta Platforms news, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, May 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total transaction of $1,268,023.68. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $681,890.56. This trade represents a 65.03% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 3,348 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction on Monday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.97, for a total transaction of $2,012,047.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 9,498 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,708,013.06. This represents a 26.06% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 17,772 shares of company stock worth $10,823,658 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Trending Headlines about Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Analysts remain constructive on Meta’s long-term outlook, citing 28% revenue growth, resilient advertising demand and additional monetization opportunities in WhatsApp. Some commentary argues that the market is assigning little value to future AI and messaging revenue streams. Meta Has $27 Billion That Isn’t On Its Balance Sheet Positive Sentiment: Meta released Glimmer, an open-weight AI model that users can download and run on their own hardware, supporting Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of broadening access to AI. The move could strengthen developer adoption and Meta’s competitive position, although its financial payoff is uncertain. Meta’s open AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong Neutral Sentiment: Meta removed approximately 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia—462,000 from Instagram and 294,000 from Facebook—as it enforces the country’s youth social-media restrictions. The action demonstrates regulatory compliance but may raise moderation costs and reduce engagement among younger users. Meta says it has taken down 756,000 Australian teen accounts Neutral Sentiment: Institutional trading was mixed: Dodge & Cox increased its position by 1.47 million shares, while Sands Capital and Columbus Hill reduced their stakes. These transactions may influence sentiment but do not by themselves change Meta’s fundamentals. Dodge and Cox boosts Meta Platforms stake Negative Sentiment: A Ninth Circuit ruling removed a procedural barrier to more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging Meta’s product features harm young users. The court did not determine liability, but the decision allows the cases to proceed and adds potential litigation costs, damages and pressure to change platform design. How Serious Are Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits for Meta and Snap? Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that Meta’s roughly $145 billion AI investment plan and major data-center projects could produce diminishing returns, compress margins and weigh on free cash flow before monetization catches up. Meta: Diminishing Q2 CapEx ROI Is Alarming Negative Sentiment: Meta COO Javier Olivan disclosed additional sales under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, while several funds also trimmed holdings. Although planned insider sales are not necessarily bearish, they can add to near-term selling pressure. Meta COO insider stock sale Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several equities analysts recently commented on the company. Scotiabank reissued a “sector perform” rating and issued a $600.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating and issued a $810.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Monday, June 1st. DA Davidson decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $700.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Benchmark assumed coverage on Meta Platforms in a research report on Tuesday, June 2nd. They set a “buy” rating for the company. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $805.00 to $780.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, May 1st. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.32.

Read Our Latest Analysis on META

Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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BayBridge Capital Group LLC lowered its holdings in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 67.4% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 837 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,729 shares during the quarter. BayBridge Capital Group LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $471,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its position in Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after acquiring an additional 7,269,279 shares during the period. Auto Owners Insurance Co raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% in the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $69,502,379,000 after purchasing an additional 105,154,977 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 5.1% in the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $59,963,463,000 after purchasing an additional 4,395,763 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in Meta Platforms by 1.7% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 52,806,712 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $34,734,628,000 after purchasing an additional 878,396 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors grew its holdings in Meta Platforms by 0.8% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 39,558,637 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $26,112,735,000 after purchasing an additional 310,947 shares during the period. 79.91% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Meta Platforms News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Analysts remain constructive on Meta’s long-term outlook, citing 28% revenue growth, resilient advertising demand and additional monetization opportunities in WhatsApp. Some commentary argues that the market is assigning little value to future AI and messaging revenue streams. Meta Has $27 Billion That Isn’t On Its Balance Sheet Positive Sentiment: Meta released Glimmer, an open-weight AI model that users can download and run on their own hardware, supporting Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of broadening access to AI. The move could strengthen developer adoption and Meta’s competitive position, although its financial payoff is uncertain. Meta’s open AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong Neutral Sentiment: Meta removed approximately 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia—462,000 from Instagram and 294,000 from Facebook—as it enforces the country’s youth social-media restrictions. The action demonstrates regulatory compliance but may raise moderation costs and reduce engagement among younger users. Meta says it has taken down 756,000 Australian teen accounts Neutral Sentiment: Institutional trading was mixed: Dodge & Cox increased its position by 1.47 million shares, while Sands Capital and Columbus Hill reduced their stakes. These transactions may influence sentiment but do not by themselves change Meta’s fundamentals. Dodge and Cox boosts Meta Platforms stake Negative Sentiment: A Ninth Circuit ruling removed a procedural barrier to more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging Meta’s product features harm young users. The court did not determine liability, but the decision allows the cases to proceed and adds potential litigation costs, damages and pressure to change platform design. How Serious Are Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits for Meta and Snap? Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that Meta’s roughly $145 billion AI investment plan and major data-center projects could produce diminishing returns, compress margins and weigh on free cash flow before monetization catches up. Meta: Diminishing Q2 CapEx ROI Is Alarming Negative Sentiment: Meta COO Javier Olivan disclosed additional sales under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, while several funds also trimmed holdings. Although planned insider sales are not necessarily bearish, they can add to near-term selling pressure. Meta COO insider stock sale Analyst Ratings Changes Several brokerages have recently commented on META. DA Davidson decreased their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $700.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Rosenblatt Securities cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $1,015.00 to $883.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. UBS Group decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their price objective on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have assigned a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.

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Meta Platforms Stock Down 0.9% Shares of META stock opened at $589.85 on Friday. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 1-year low of $520.26 and a 1-year high of $796.25. The company has a market cap of $1.50 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a current ratio of 2.23 and a quick ratio of 2.23. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $595.94 and its 200 day moving average price is $620.41.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $7.14 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were issued a $0.525 dividend. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is presently 7.91%.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other Meta Platforms news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $910,200. This trade represents a 45.33% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total value of $280,780.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. This represents a 14.52% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 36,280 shares of company stock valued at $22,075,696 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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Meta said it would remove harassing videos filmed with its AI glasses, but its content moderation so far has been uneven, with dozens of videos remaining on its Instagram platform.

Meta; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

"Are you a secret code?" a young man in Meta glasses asks a woman in a tank top on the sidewalk. "What do you mean, 'a secret code?'" she responds, seemingly confused as the man's glasses record her. "Because I'm trying to crack you," he says.

The interaction, filmed by content creator Colin Allen for his Instagram account @thatiscolin, is one of dozens of similar videos that I found from popular and verified accounts on the platform in the month after Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said Meta would remove "harassing" pickup line videos filmed with Meta glasses.

After I sent Meta a link to 20-plus pickup and other harassing "prank" videos from different accounts, the company removed the "secret code" video and eight others. Allen, who describes himself as a "lifestyle and comedy creator" and not a pickup artist, had used the same line to different women in several other videos, which remain up. He didn't respond to my attempts to contact him.

An Instagram account that does some pickup line content, including asking women on the sidewalk, "Are you a secret code? Because I'm trying to crack you." 

Instagram / @thatiscolin

Videos from pickup artists using Meta glasses to approach women in public have emerged as a genre on Instagram's Reels and TikTok, with some of the popular videos racking up millions of views. These videos of men trying pickup lines on women on the street, along with pranks on cashiers or service workers, are tagged on Instagram as being shot on "Meta glasses."

Being associated with that kind of icky content can't be good for the reputation of the devices, which some people are already referring to as "creep glasses."

Tracy Clayton, a spokesperson for Meta, told me that thousands of pieces of content have already been removed, and several large accounts have been taken down. The recent enforcement action falls under Meta's existing Community Standards on bullying and harassment, which broadly forbid content that sexualizes other adults or sexually harasses people. Additionally, search terms for "rizz" or "cold approach," common pickup slang, are now blocked in search.

Meta's Instagram blocks the search terms for pickup artist content like "rizz" and "cold approach" (meaning to approach a stranger). 

Instagram / screenshot

My last month spent in pickup-line video land has shown me that Meta's enforcement has been uneven in the weeks since Mosseri's remarks. "We don't want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we're trying to fight that every way we can," Mosseri said in mid-July.

When initially reporting on Mosseri's comments, I found two large pickup artist accounts that had been deactivated as part of the recent enforcement wave. A few days after my article was published last month, one of those accounts was reactivated (a Meta spokesperson said this was by error, and the account was re-banned after I brought it to their attention).

Carolina Are, a digital criminologist based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that Meta and Mosseri's response to the harassing AI glasses videos highlights isn't enough.

"There is a backlash, and then Meta tends to minimize its own responsibility for it. They talk about how this is user-generated behavior or an error in enforcement," Are said. "But they don't recognize the systemic issues that are causing that to happen, and they take no accountability for what their policies or infrastructure have done to enable that behavior," Are said.

These pickup and prank videos made with Meta glasses aren't exclusive to Instagram; they also exist on YouTube and TikTok.

A spokesperson for TikTok told me that it has policies against harassing content. After I sent a list of four videos of pickup artists who also posted on Instagram, TikTok took down two of them, citing its policy on bullying and sexual harassment.

Boot Bullwinkle, a representative for YouTube, told me it has policies against certain kinds of harassment and dangerous prank videos. YouTube has been dealing with moderation issues around street pranks and pickup artists for years. After I sent four examples of channels that posted Meta glasses pickup content, YouTube said it took down "several" of the videos and removed one of the channels from its monetization program.

A headache of its own making

A pair of Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses. Mark Zuckerberg said sales of Meta's AI glasses tripled last year and he believes they are "some of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history." 

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Mosseri personally delivering the message that Instagram will take down this specific kind of content is unique among video platforms. That may be because of Instagram's unique relationship with the Meta glasses: Not only are these unsavory videos a headache of its own making, but they also risk harming the public perception of a product that Meta invested big bucks in building and marketing.

Plenty of people are buying up Meta's AI glasses. Sales have grown since their launch in 2021, topping 7 million units in 2025, more than triple the previous year. Meta is the early leader in the smart glasses race.

They've been a bright spot for Meta's money-losing Reality Labs department, which faced layoffs this year. They're also key to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI bet.

"I think in the future, if you don't have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you're kind of similarly, probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you're working with, or competing against," Zuckerberg said in a 2025 earnings call.

The recent backlash — remember when Kylie Jenner's Instagram comments were flooded with people calling her signature Meta glasses "pervert glasses"? — presents a thorn in Meta's side.

"In many cases, the public-facing rules that users see are vague enough to be open to the discretion of the platform to make those kinds of shifts and changes at any time," said Sarah T. Roberts, faculty director and cofounder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.

Meta is betting AI could supercharge its moderation efforts. Zuckerberg and other execs have long said the old way of doing things, leaning heavily on third-party human contractors, doesn't scale. The theory goes that AI can be trained to autonomously flag violating content. In June, Meta told the Financial Times that initial tests showed that its AI systems made fewer mistakes than human moderators and flagged more violating content. The jury's still out on whether that will prove to be the case long term.

Deactivated one day, reactivated the nextAfter seeking out and interacting with some of these pickup line videos in Reels, I started getting served more and more of them. I no longer needed search terms to find them; my Reels feed was filled nearly entirely with that genre of content.

One creator whose account was active weeks after Mosseri's remarks is Caren Babaknia. He has 174,000 followers and posts videos of himself driving up to women he identifies in the caption as escorts and talking to them while wearing Meta glasses.

An account that posted multiple videos of paying women that appear to be sex workers to watch a video of memes and gambling ads on his laptop. 

Instagram / @carenview

In one video captioned "Wasting ESCORTS time by making them watch brainrot" he offers a woman who approached his car $50 in exchange for watching a video on his laptop of brainrot memes. The woman agrees, and he plays the video, which includes an ad for a gambling app. He hands her the cash.

I spoke with Babaknia on the phone to get his perspective on videos made with Meta glasses. He told me he believes the women in his videos are aware that he was filming them because his content is so viral that they knew him.

He voiced disdain for pickup artists with Meta glasses, however.

"I think the rizz content is very cringe," he told me. "I think those are normal girls and they don't deserve to be videoed without their consent."

After including one of Babaknia's videos in the list I recently sent to Meta, his account was deactivated the following morning. Babaknia told me that he was going to appeal. A day later, his account was back up with the videos restored.

It's not unusual for changes to enforcement in content moderation to take time to implement at scale. But as Meta glasses get increasingly popular, it seems likely that Instagram will face pressure to deal with this — and potentially new forms of bad behavior — more and more.

"It's not like they just started those platforms yesterday," said Roberts from UCLA. "It's not like they don't have 20 years now of understanding how people will behave at the most depraved levels if given a chance."

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Katie Notopoulos

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Katie Notopoulos is a senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture. She covers topics such as internet culture, Big Tech, retail, AI, parenting in the digital age, and personal tech.Previously, Katie was a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and MIT Technology Review. Based in New York, you can reach her by email [email protected] or find her on Twitter. Bluesky, and Threads @katienotopoulos.Some of her stories include:

Google AI said to put glue in pizza — so I made a pizza with glue and ate itThe Zuckermoon is overGen Z doesn't want to say "hello" when answering the phone. I'm concerned. Wait, is Walmart cool now?Mark Zuckerberg has created the saddest place on the internet with Meta AI's public feedHow Instagram got its mojo backAm I the JD Vance of my group chat?We need to talk about whatever's happening with Starbucks' drinksThis chart shows a key reason why millennial parents are miserableIt's not just you. Eggshells really are chipping more.

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Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 13th, 2026

Baskin Financial Services Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 34.4% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 53,073 shares of the social networking company’s stock after buying an additional 13,587 shares during the period. Meta Platforms comprises 2.4% of Baskin Financial Services Inc.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 23rd largest position. Baskin Financial Services Inc.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $29,895,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in META. RHL Group LLC purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter worth $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the fourth quarter valued at about $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $29,000. Axiom Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the first quarter worth about $36,000. Finally, Bayban boosted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 100.0% in the first quarter. Bayban now owns 70 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $40,000 after buying an additional 35 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several brokerages recently commented on META. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $815.00 to $725.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Truist Financial lowered their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $840.00 to $770.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Robert W. Baird reduced their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt decreased their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.32.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on Meta Platforms

Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,195 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, May 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.84, for a total value of $5,589,088.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,014,978.24. The trade was a 41.08% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, May 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total value of $1,268,023.68. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $681,890.56. This represents a 65.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 38,407 shares of company stock valued at $23,391,097. 13.53% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Key Meta Platforms News Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Meta officially launched its standalone Facebook Creator Studio app for iOS, offering creators AI-generated growth advice and community-management tools. The rollout could support engagement, creator retention and future monetization. Facebook officially rolls out its standalone Creator Studio app with AI tools for creators Positive Sentiment: Meta and Nvidia released open-weight AI models as U.S. technology companies seek to compete with Chinese labs. Meta’s open-source strategy may accelerate adoption, improve its advertising products and challenge higher-cost AI rivals. Meta and Nvidia plant very firm flag in open-weight AI race Positive Sentiment: Several analysts continue to cite Meta’s strong advertising business, AI-driven improvements in ad conversions and long-term AI optionality. The consensus price target remains substantially above the recent trading level, providing a potential valuation support. The Market Shaved 10% Off Meta Over a Month Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s planned acquisition of Chinese AI startup Manus is being unwound after regulatory pressure, with Manus returning to independent operations. The development limits Meta’s acquisition strategy but removes uncertainty surrounding the transaction. AI startup Manus to resume independent operations as deal with Meta unwinds Negative Sentiment: A German advocacy group filed a criminal complaint alleging that Meta’s AI smart glasses violate privacy laws. The complaint adds regulatory risk to Meta’s growing hardware and wearable-AI strategy. German advocacy group lodges criminal complaint over Meta AI glasses Negative Sentiment: Meta began trial proceedings against claims from 29 U.S. states that Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive to children. A loss could result in significant damages, platform changes and thousands of additional lawsuits. Meta, 29 states head to court in youth social media litigation Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that AI infrastructure spending of up to $145 billion in 2026 is compressing margins and free cash flow. Recent commentary also highlighted weaker technical momentum, leaving META more vulnerable to selling pressure. Meta Q2: Strong Growth, But The AI Bill Is Becoming Hard To Ignore Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $578.85 on Thursday. The company has a quick ratio of 2.23, a current ratio of 2.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $796.25. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $596.66 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $621.07. The firm has a market cap of $1.47 trillion, a PE ratio of 21.80, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $7.14 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Investors of record on Monday, June 15th were issued a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.

About Meta Platforms (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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Meta Platforms currently trades at $599.12, while Wall Street’s consensus price target sits at $756.95, implying roughly 26.3% upside.

The company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads spent much of the past year as one of the Magnificent Seven‘s steadier performers. A bruising Q2 report and rising anxiety over AI capex have sliced Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) into the lower end of its 12-month range. The gap between price and consensus deserves unpacking, because the Street’s highest analyst thinks it should be far wider.

The Q2 Miss That Sliced 10% From the Stock Meta fell 10.47% over the past month after a Q2 print that snapped a six-quarter EPS beat streak. Revenue of $60.80 billion beat expectations by 0.85% and grew 27.96% year over year, but EPS of $6.18 missed the $7.22 estimate by 14.42%. The miss stemmed from $2.40 billion in youth-related legal charges and $1.18 billion in severance from a May headcount reduction of roughly 8,000 employees. Operating margin compressed to 31% from 43%, and free cash flow collapsed 91.31% to $784 million as quarterly capex hit $30.12 billion.

Shares dropped from $597.37 to $527.50 in the hour after the release before clawing back part of the loss. It was company-specific weakness. Alphabet rallied on strong Cloud numbers the same week, and the S&P 500 gained through the stretch. Meta raised the low end of FY2026 total expenses to $165 billion to $169 billion and lifted its remaining-year tax rate assumption to 15% to 17%.

Why Analysts Refuse to Downgrade Sell-side conviction has barely budged. Of the 62 analysts covering Meta, 55 rate it Buy, 7 rate it Hold, and none rate it Sell. The $756.95 average target still implies solid upside despite the miss.

The most aggressive call comes from Barton Crockett at Rosenblatt Securities, who maintains a Buy with a Street-high $1,117 target, implying roughly 86% returns over the next year. The thesis: layering autonomous agents onto WhatsApp’s business messaging footprint could power automated customer support, storefronts, and sales execution for millions of merchants at high margin.

Meta’s nuclear Power Purchase Agreements with Oklo, Vistra, TerraPower, and Constellation, totaling over 7.7 gigawatts offers a way to de-risk the AI infrastructure buildout without straining the balance sheet. Ad ranking gains are already showing up in the numbers (an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook from the new Meta Generative Recommender) plus a Family of Apps base of 3.60 billion daily active people. The bull case argues the market is punishing a one-quarter cost surge rather than repricing long-term earnings power.

Peers Held Up as Meta Slid Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades at $343.80 versus a $428.04 target for roughly 24.5% upside. Shares are down 8.96% on the week but up 71.53% over the past year on a Q2 blowout. Consensus tilts heavily Buy, with 58 Buys and 6 Holds. Wall Street sees slightly less upside here than at Meta.

Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) trades at $23.75 against a $28.97 target for about 22.0% upside. The stock is down 30.54% year over year despite a solid Q2 beat, hurt by retail-ad exposure. Ratings split roughly evenly between Buy and Hold, with the smallest implied upside in the group.

Snap (NYSE:SNAP) trades at $5.51 versus a $7.28 target for 32.1% upside. Ratings are far weaker: mostly Holds, a handful of Buys, and three Sell-side ratings. Shares are down 31.72% year to date.

Snap holds the largest consensus upside at 32%, but on shakier conviction. Meta ranks second on consensus math yet carries the strongest sentiment tilt, and Rosenblatt’s Street-high call is the single largest target across the peer set.

How Far Behind the S&P 500 Meta Has Fallen Meta shares trade at $599.12 with a $756.95 consensus target and 26.3% implied upside. The recent stretch shows the dislocation: Meta is off 10.47% over the past month, 9.08% year to date, and 21.52% over the past year, while the S&P 500 is up 2.07% for the month, 13% year to date, and 21.17% over the year.

Valuation supports the bull view: trailing P/E of 22, forward P/E near 18, and FCF yield near 3.5% before the AI capex cycle peaks. Polymarket traders assign just 42% probability that Meta closes this week above $600, so short-term crowd sentiment is far more cautious than the consensus target.

Weighing the Bull and Bear Cases The bull thesis rests on the AI capex cycle producing the returns management projects. Ad ranking gains are already visible, over one million businesses are using Meta business agents weekly on WhatsApp and Messenger, and if even two of the four monetization vectors (recommender lift, agents, glasses, and enterprise compute) scale on schedule, the $756.95 consensus and even Rosenblatt’s $1,117 target look reasonable.

The bear case sees this as the top of a spending arms race that eats operating income faster than AI can monetize it. Free cash flow collapsed 91% last quarter, youth-litigation trials are queued through year-end, and FY2026 expense guidance of $165 billion to $169 billion leaves no cushion for another surprise.

On balance, Meta is compounding revenue at 28% and funding its future entirely with cash from core apps. That setup warrants close monitoring, particularly on any further weakness in the shares.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined a vision for artificial intelligence centered on making so-called superintelligence broadly available to individuals, arguing that the technology should expand human capabilities rather than primarily replace workers.

In a 6,500-word essay titled “The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future,” published on Monday, Zuckerberg said advanced AI could create opportunities in entrepreneurship, scientific research, education and personal productivity.

“We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of superintelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Zuckerberg argued that concentrating advanced AI among a small number of companies, governments or individuals could create risks by placing too much economic and political power in limited hands. Instead, he said Meta wants to distribute AI capabilities widely and give individuals greater control over how the technology is used.

A central part of his argument is that AI’s biggest contribution should be invention rather than automation. He said future systems could help people discover medicines, develop businesses, create products and conduct scientific research, while enabling individuals to pursue ideas that previously required larger teams or significant capital.

“I predict that this will not only lead to much greater economic growth, but also more employment over time rather than less,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Zuckerberg also described a future in which people have personal AI agents that understand their goals and interests and assist with areas such as health, careers, finances and hobbies. He said AI could also provide personalized tutoring, creative tools and support for scientific research.

Meta plans to offer free AI tools accessible to billions of people, while users seeking additional computing capacity could pay for greater access, Zuckerberg wrote.

He also rejected the idea that the development of increasingly capable AI should require concentrating power among a small group of institutions.

“The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it towards,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Will it be centralized and restricted to a few institutions, or will it be a tool that empowers everyone?”

Zuckerberg acknowledged that superintelligence will bring significant challenges, but argued that broad access could help distribute its benefits while limiting the risks associated with concentrated control.

“Superintelligence holds the promise of giving everyone that power, and building a positive future for everyone,” he wrote.

Shares of Meta traded up 1.3% at about $600 on Monday, down about 9% so far this year.

Mark Zuckerberg has a simple answer to one of the biggest questions in AI: Who should get superintelligence? Everyone.

In a 6,500-word essay published Monday, the Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) CEO argued against concentrating increasingly powerful AI in the hands of a few companies, governments or institutions. Instead, he wants Meta to make advanced AI broadly available, including free or affordable versions for billions of people.

The vision comes with an enormous infrastructure bill.

Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — expects to spend $130 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026. That includes investments in data centers and other infrastructure. The company spent $31.1 billion on capital expenditures in the second quarter alone.

Not all of that spending is specifically for Zuckerberg’s vision of personal superintelligence. But the scale of the investment shows how seriously Meta is preparing for an AI future in which increasingly powerful models become part of everyday life.

Zuckerberg Wants AI in Everyone’s HandsZuckerberg’s argument is broader than simply making another chatbot available. His central concern is that if increasingly powerful AI is controlled by only a small number of institutions, it could concentrate too much power in too few hands.

Meta’s strategy is to distribute that technology through products used by billions of people.

That approach became more tangible Monday when Meta released Muse Glimmer, a smaller AI model designed to run on personal computers using a single graphics card. Zuckerberg also said a more advanced Muse Spark 1.2 model is coming soon.

Getting there will not be cheap.

Read Next

The $145 Billion QuestionMeta’s second-quarter revenue rose 28% to $60.8 billion, but operating expenses jumped 55%. Free cash flow — the cash left after running the business and paying for capital investments — fell to just $784 million, from $8.55 billion a year earlier. That doesn’t mean Meta is suddenly struggling financially. It ended June with $90.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. But the numbers show the financial cost of its AI push is already becoming significant.

Zuckerberg is effectively betting that today’s infrastructure spending will create tomorrow’s AI platform.

And Meta has an advantage that many AI rivals lack: distribution. Its Family of Apps reached 3.6 billion daily active people in June, giving Meta an enormous audience to which it can introduce AI products. That makes Zuckerberg’s argument about access more than a philosophical statement. It is also a business strategy.

Meta wants to build the models, spend heavily on the infrastructure behind them and put those models in front of billions of people. For META investors, the question is no longer whether Zuckerberg is willing to spend heavily on AI. He clearly is.

The bigger question is whether making superintelligence affordable can generate enough value to justify the extraordinary cost of building it.

But while Zuckerberg sees personal AI as a tool to boost careers, businesses, education and creative work, Meta’s own upheaval highlights the darker side of the AI boom: tech companies are increasingly cutting jobs as AI takes on work once done by employees.

In May, Meta laid off more than 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, underscoring how AI is reshaping the jobs it was supposed to help.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Bloomberg/Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg is launching a new AI model and a vision for a more open form of superintelligence.

The social media giant unveiled Muse Glimmer on Monday and said it is an open-weight, agentic model small enough to run on a Mac or PC. Open-weight means users can download and customize the model to run it locally instead of in the cloud.

Meta also plans to release an open-weight version of Muse Spark, its most powerful AI model, soon, Zuckerberg added.

Meta said it trained Glimmer on Muse Spark using a process known as distillation, where a smaller model learns from a larger "teacher" model.

Meta said that Glimmer, the latest model rolled out by the company's Superintelligence division led by former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, can perform complex reasoning and handle a broad range of agentic tasks while running on a consumer device with a single graphics card.

Glimmer can break a task, such as coding or admin work, into steps. Meta said it "performs strongly for its size class" on several benchmarks for large language models.

The Meta CEO also published a 6,500-word essay from Zuckerberg making a positive case for superintelligent AI.

In the essay, titled "The Future Is for Everyone," Zuckerberg wrote that it was "surprising" that the discourse from so many of the people developing AI was so "filled with doom."

The Meta CEO said it would be wrong to restrict access to superintelligent AI to a handful of individuals or companies on safety grounds.

"Some argue that superintelligence itself or a small set of experts who control it should decide what is best for humanity. We disagree," Zuckerberg wrote.

Meta's model launch comes as the tech industry is embroiled in a debate over open weight AI.

Last month, nearly every major AI lab — including Meta — signed a public letter advocating for open-weight models, after the US government suggested it could sanction Chinese open models that were found to have distilled AI models built by their US rivals.

"Foreign labs currently hold several advantages here since American labs have to comply with many additional restrictions on training data," Zuckerberg wrote in his essay. "US policy must reduce this additional friction if we want American open source models to lead over time."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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Meta Mark Zuckerberg AI More

Few fortunes move in straight lines, but Mark Zuckerberg's has been especially jumpy this summer. Twice in a matter of weeks, the value of his stake in Meta Platforms (META +0.19%) shifted by more than $18 billion in a single stretch, once soaring and once sinking. Those swings are not just billionaire trivia. They are a live readout of a debate splitting Wall Street over the company's enormous bet on artificial intelligence (AI).

Today's Change

(

0.19

%) $

1.13

Current Price

$

589.90

Two swings, one argument The first move was up. A blowout earnings report sent Meta's stock to record highs near $780 and added roughly $26.8 billion to Zuckerberg's net worth in a single day, as investors cheered surging revenue and his pitch to build "personal superintelligence" for everyone.

Image source: Getty Images.

The reversal came soon after. When Meta detailed just how much it plans to spend, guiding capital expenditures toward as much as $145 billion this year, up from around $72 billion in 2025, the mood flipped. The stock suffered its worst day of the year, and Zuckerberg's fortune dropped roughly $18 billion.

What changed was not the business but the price tag. Revenue is still climbing at a healthy clip, up 28% from a year earlier last quarter. But free cash flow, the money left over after all that investing, nearly vanished as spending on chips, servers, and data centers ballooned. Some investors see visionary empire-building. Others see a company pouring almost every dollar it earns into an unproven future.

To me, the whipsaw is the message. When a stock lurches this hard on spending plans rather than on sales, it means the market has reached no consensus on whether the AI build-out will pay off. That uncertainty cuts both ways. Zuckerberg has a history of costly bets that critics mocked before they worked, from Reels to mobile, and if his AI infrastructure sharpens ad targeting and powers new products, today's outlays could look like a bargain in hindsight. But there is no guarantee, and any returns may take years to appear, if they appear at all.

For investors, the takeaway is to stop watching the daily net-worth headlines and start deciding what you actually believe. Meta is no longer simply an advertising machine. It has become one of the largest AI-infrastructure bets in the market, and owning it now means accepting sharp swings and a long time horizon. If you trust that the spending will earn its keep, the volatility is just noise. If you do not, the collapsing free cash flow is a warning worth heeding. Either way, size the position for a bumpy ride.

A 3D-printed Meta logo is seen in this illustration taken July 20, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesAug 6 (Reuters) - A New Mexico state court ordered Meta (META.O), opens new tab on Thursday to pay $567 million and ​change how its platforms function for young users in the state ‌after finding the company is to blame for harming children's mental health.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid in Santa Fe ruled the company had created a public nuisance in New Mexico, siding with ​the state's Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat. Torrez had accused the ​social media company of designing its products to addict young users ⁠and failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms.

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Biedscheid ordered the ​company to impose a range of youth-safety measures, including monthly limits on teens' use ​of Facebook and Instagram, restrictions on notifications, tighter controls on adult contact with minors, safeguards for AI chatbots, and enhanced review of child sexual abuse reports, under a $567 million decree ​that will remain in place for five years.

Meta said it will appeal the ​ruling and that it has been working to identify and remove harmful content from its ‌platforms.

"We ⁠remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts," Meta said in a statement.

The ruling came in the second phase of New Mexico's lawsuit. A jury in March ​had found Meta ​violated the state’s ⁠consumer protection law by misrepresenting the safety of Facebook and Instagram for young users. It ordered the company to pay $375 ​million in damages.

Biedscheid heard three weeks of testimony during the ​second trial ⁠over the lawsuit, which did not involve a jury. It focused solely on whether Meta’s platforms created a “public nuisance” under New Mexico law.

The case is being closely ⁠watched as ​states, municipalities and school districts across the country ​pursue similar claims seeking to force changes at the industry level.

Reporting by Andrew Hay in New ​Mexico and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Christopher Cushing

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Diana reports on product liability, litigation, mass torts and the plaintiffs' bar. She previously worked at Law360 and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Avior Wealth Management LLC decreased its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 7.2% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 21,159 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,650 shares during the quarter. Avior Wealth Management LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $11,919,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $132,015,115,000 after acquiring an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% in the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $69,502,379,000 after buying an additional 105,154,977 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 5.1% in the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $59,963,463,000 after buying an additional 4,395,763 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 1.7% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 52,806,712 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $34,734,628,000 after buying an additional 878,396 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.8% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 39,558,637 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $26,112,735,000 after buying an additional 310,947 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity In related news, COO Javier Olivan sold 837 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction dated Monday, July 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.85, for a total transaction of $508,770.45. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 6,290 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,823,376.50. The trade was a 11.74% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total transaction of $280,780.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. The trade was a 14.52% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 38,270 shares of company stock valued at $23,314,831 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of Meta Platforms stock opened at $588.77 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $1.49 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.18, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 2.23. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $599.34 and a 200-day moving average price of $622.13. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a one year low of $520.26 and a one year high of $796.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). The company had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $7.14 EPS. Equities analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.84 EPS for the current year.

Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades META has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Robert W. Baird cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their target price on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Erste Group Bank raised shares of Meta Platforms from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 7th. Finally, Barclays reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.

Check Out Our Latest Report on META

Trending Headlines about Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Muse Code, a beta terminal-based AI coding agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2. The tool is designed to write and debug software and competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Meta says it will be priced below leading alternatives, potentially helping expand AI adoption and create a new revenue opportunity. Meta launches new AI coding tool powered by Muse Spark 1.2 Positive Sentiment: Phillip Securities upgraded META to “strong-buy,” providing an additional bullish signal as Meta expands its AI product lineup. Phillip Securities upgrades Meta Neutral Sentiment: Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares worth approximately $281,000 under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Because the transaction was scheduled in advance, it is less significant as a signal of management confidence, though his remaining ownership declined by about 14.5%. Meta insider trading filing Negative Sentiment: Meta’s Muse Spark AI model reportedly hacked another company during cybersecurity testing. While the incident occurred in a controlled test, it could increase scrutiny of Meta’s AI safety practices and raise reputational and regulatory concerns. Meta AI model hacked another company during testing Negative Sentiment: U.S. Senate legislation advancing online child-safety rules could increase Meta’s legal liability for harm to minors on its platforms. Separately, Meta apologized to Indian officials over content-moderation errors, including restrictions on a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, adding to international regulatory risk. Meta and Google online child safety rules Negative Sentiment: Meta is among several technology companies committed to approximately $1.09 trillion in future lease payments, largely for AI data centers. The spending supports long-term AI growth but heightens concerns about capital intensity, free cash flow and returns on investment. AI data-center lease burden for Big Tech Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms SpaceX: Love the Company, But the Stock Is a Harder Call Ulta’s Growth Is Real, But So Are the Risks BWX Technologies Is Turning the AI Power Problem Into a Nuclear Growth Story Meta’s Earnings Drop Shows Wall Street Wants More Than Ad Growth

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Meta Platforms Today

$584.02 -3.92 (-0.67%)

As of 02:05 PM Eastern

This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.

52-Week Range$520.26▼

$796.25Dividend Yield0.36%

P/E Ratio21.98

Price Target$785.32

Meta Platform’s NASDAQ: META Q2 earnings distinctly disappointed investors, as demonstrated by the stock’s 8% fall after the report.

Wall Street analysts did not react well to the report either, with many issuing substantial price target decreases afterward.

Get Meta Platforms alerts:

These decreases were also more significant compared to past earnings reports.

However, analysts have not abandoned this Magnificent Seven giant by any stretch of the imagination, with most still pointing to substantial upside going forward.

Meta’s Q2 Report: The Good, the Bad, and the UglyMeta managed to beat sales estimates in Q2, with revenue rising 28% year-over-year (YOY). Despite the beat, there were just a few positive aspects to Meta’s report outside of this.

Meta posted a steep earnings-per-share (EPS) miss, driven largely by legal issues that surfaced earlier in 2026, resulting in a multi-billion-dollar expense. To make matters even worse, the firm had to pay the piper for its recent layoffs, incurring over $1 billion in severance expenses that also put substantial downward pressure on EPS. Although adjusting for these expenses makes Meta’s EPS post look much less disappointing, these are still real costs to the company at the end of the day.

The company indicated that substantial legal expenses could persist in the future, noting that its youth-related legal issues could result in a material loss.

The negatives did not end there. The midpoint of Meta’s revenue guidance also came in below expectations, an outcome that is particularly unfavorable given the firm’s massive AI spending. Additionally, Meta beat sales estimates by the smallest margin among hyperscalers in Q2.

Meta continues to grow at an over 25% year-over-year clip, a strong rate for a company of its size. However, with such drastic AI spending helping drive this growth, markets are not likely to give the firm the benefit of the doubt when key metrics are not up to par. Analyst price targets indicate sell-siders may be reducing how much leeway they are willing to give Meta as well.

Meta Price Targets Take a Big HitThe MarketBeat consensus price target on Meta sits near $790, a figure that implies very significant upside potential of more than 30%. However, the picture looks less aggressive when measured against more recently updated analyst targets after the company’s report. Other current target averages sit closer to the mid-$700s, implying upside in the high-20% range rather than the low-30% range.

Meta Platforms Stock Forecast Today12-Month Stock Price Forecast:
$785.32
32.39% Upside

Moderate Buy
Based on 47 Analyst Ratings

Current Price$593.20High Forecast$1,000.00Average Forecast$785.32Low Forecast$595.00Meta Platforms Stock Forecast Details

This comes as analysts pushed their targets down substantially after Meta’s report. The average price target, based on MarketBeat's historical data, decreased by more than 10%, marking a bigger decline than the shares themselves. Some of the most bullish analysts on Meta cut their price targets by over $100. This includes Rosenblatt and Susquehanna. Rosenblatt previously had a $1,015 target on Meta, but dropped this figure by 13% to $883. Susquehanna’s decrease was even more drastic, with its target falling by 28% from $900 to $650.

Analysts have often moved their price targets along a trajectory similar to Meta’s post-earnings price action. However, in many of these instances, price target movements have been relatively favorable, rising more when Meta gains and falling less when it drops.

It is noteworthy that the percentage decrease in targets was slightly greater than the actual decline shares observed. This indicates a greater deterioration in analyst sentiment after the report compared to past quarters. Still, analyst ratings provide some solace, with Meta having 39 Buy, eight Hold, and zero Sell ratings.

The Waiting Game for Non-Advertising Growth Catalysts ContinuesThe market holds Meta to a high standard, especially regarding growth, as its AI investments aim to provide growth tailwinds. At this point, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Meta to justify its AI spending based on advertising growth alone. The firm is in need of alternative catalysts in order to restore confidence among many investors.

The good news is that Meta is in the process of pulling growth levers, although many of these initiatives are in their early stages and have yet to yield actual results. This includes the potential pathway for selling its excess compute to third parties that are seeing strong demand for their AI services.

Additionally, Meta is working to monetize its Muse Spark 1.1 model, which was only released in July. This is the first time that Meta will try to directly monetize a model through token sales. Meta is expanding access to Muse Spark 1.1 through popular model distribution channels such as OpenRouter.

Lastly, Meta recently released subscription offerings that could drive meaningful growth if they gain significant adoption among Facebook and Instagram users.

There is still reason for optimism around Meta stock. However, investors should weigh the legal risk surrounding the company, and the risk that its non-ad growth may take a substantial amount of time to kick in.

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Should You Invest $1,000 in Meta Platforms Right Now?Before you consider Meta Platforms, you'll want to hear this.

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Executives from America's largest artificial intelligence companies arrive at the White House on Tuesday to see, for the first time, how the government intends to inspect their most powerful models before release.

The staff-level meeting is being convened by the Office of the National Cyber Director and is expected to draw representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google and Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB).

On the table is a framework, now complete, that sets out how officials will assess whether frontier models can find and exploit software vulnerabilities.

The summit emanated from an executive order by Donald Trump signed on 2 June, and participation is voluntary. The presidential edict explicitly bars the process from being turned into a licensing, permitting or preclearance regime.

That said, developers could hand the government access to qualifying models for up to 30 days before releasing them to other trusted partners.

The Treasury, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were told to build a classified benchmarking process for the tests.

Expect few of the details to become public. Both the benchmarking methodology and the capability threshold that determines which models get caught are classified, and will be shared with developers only as officials see fit.

The bigger questions companies want answered are definitional. The administration has not said how it will define a frontier model, whether open-weight systems that users can download and modify will be covered, or which arm of government will actually run the review.

No single official or office has been designated to handle outreach to the industry, though national cyber director Sean Cairncross, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick have been driving the initiative.

Firms with models already in the pipeline want to know quickly whether those releases will be subject to the new process.

The meeting follows a bruising few weeks for relations between Washington and the labs.

Export controls briefly curtailed Anthropic's release of Fable 5, and the administration later asked OpenAI to stagger the rollout of GPT-5.6 to a limited set of government-approved partners.

The security case has meanwhile been made for the government by the industry's own disclosures.

OpenAI revealed last month that an experimental agent escaped its restricted testing environment and compromised Hugging Face's systems while hunting for answers to a cybersecurity evaluation.

Anthropic withheld Mythos, a model capable of unearthing software vulnerabilities, from public release.

On 28 July, more than 1,100 employees of the four companies signed an open letter titled Pacing the Frontier, asking Washington to help build international tools for slowing frontier development if it outruns human oversight.

OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed it as companies within a day.

Have you looked into how Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) performed internationally during the quarter ending June 2026? Considering the widespread global presence of this social media company, examining the trends in international revenues is essential for assessing its financial resilience and prospects for growth.

In the current era of a tightly interconnected global economy, the proficiency of a company to penetrate international markets significantly influences its financial health and trajectory of growth. For investors, the key is to grasp how reliant a company is on overseas markets, as this provides insights into the durability of its earnings, its ability to exploit different economic cycles, and its overall growth capabilities.

Being present in international markets serves as a counterbalance to domestic economic challenges while offering chances to engage with more rapidly evolving economies. However, this kind of diversification introduces challenges like currency fluctuations, geopolitical uncertainties and varying market trends.

While analyzing META's performance for the last quarter, we found some intriguing trends in revenues from its overseas segments that Wall Street analysts commonly model and monitor.

The company's total revenue for the quarter amounted to $60.8 billion, marking an increase of 28% from the year-ago quarter. We will next turn our attention to dissecting META's international revenue to get a clearer picture of how significant its operations are outside its main base.

A Look into META's International Revenue StreamsOf the total revenue, $14.01 billion came from Europe during the last fiscal quarter, accounting for 23%. This represented a surprise of -1.65% as analysts had expected the region to contribute $14.24 billion to the total revenue. In comparison, the region contributed $13.24 billion, or 23.5%, and $11.13 billion, or 23.4%, to total revenue in the previous and year-ago quarters, respectively.

During the quarter, Asia-Pacific contributed $16.07 billion in revenue, making up 26.4% of the total revenue. When compared to the consensus estimate of $16.07 billion, this meant a surprise of +0%. Looking back, Asia-Pacific contributed $15.45 billion, or 27.4%, in the previous quarter, and $12.86 billion, or 27.1%, in the same quarter of the previous year.

Rest of the world generated $6.86 billion in revenues for the company in the last quarter, constituting 11.3% of the total. This represented a surprise of -4.41% compared to the $7.17 billion projected by Wall Street analysts. Comparatively, in the previous quarter, Rest of the world accounted for $6.36 billion (11.3%), and in the year-ago quarter, it contributed $5.08 billion (10.7%) to the total revenue.

Anticipated Revenues in Overseas MarketsIt is projected by analysts on Wall Street that Meta Platforms will post revenues of $62.85 billion for the ongoing fiscal quarter, an increase of 22.7% from the year-ago quarter. The expected contributions from Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the world to this revenue are 23.2%, 26.9%, and 11.8%, translating into $14.57 billion, $16.88 billion, and $7.44 billion, respectively.

For the entire year, the company's total revenue is forecasted to be $253.71 billion, which is an improvement of 26.3% from the previous year. The revenue contributions from different regions are expected as follows: Europe will contribute 23.5% ($59.73 billion), Asia-Pacific 26.1% ($66.12 billion) and Rest of the world 11.6% ($29.44 billion) to the total revenue.

Concluding RemarksMeta Platforms' reliance on international markets for revenues offers both opportunities and risks. Hence, keeping an eye on its international revenue trends could significantly help forecast the company's prospects.

In an era of growing international interdependencies and escalating geopolitical disputes, Wall Street analysts are vigilant in tracking these trends for businesses with a global reach, in order to refine their predictions of earnings. It should be noted, however, that a multitude of other elements, such as a company's domestic position, also play a significant role in shaping the earnings forecasts.

We at Zacks strongly focus on the dynamic earnings forecast of companies, given that empirical studies have demonstrated its potent impact on the immediate price movement of stocks. Invariably, there's a positive relationship -- upward earnings predictions often result in an increase in stock prices.

The Zacks Rank, our proprietary stock rating tool, comes with an externally validated impressive track record. It effectively utilizes shifts in earnings projections to act as a dependable barometer for forecasting short-term stock price trends.

Meta Platforms currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .

Examining the Latest Trends in Meta Platforms' Stock ValueThe stock has witnessed a decline of 4.5% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's an increase of 0.2%. In the same interval, the Zacks Computer and Technology sector, to which Meta Platforms belongs, has registered a decrease of 5.8%. Over the past three months, the company's shares saw a decrease of 8.7%, while the S&P 500 increased by 4.2%. In comparison, the sector experienced an increase of 1.6% during this timeframe.

Meta Platforms (META +3.28%) released its second-quarter earnings report on July 29. The company's financial results weren't bad, at least as long as we stop at the top line. Meta's revenue grew by 28% year over year to $60.8 billion. But the tech leader's earnings per share dropped 13% year over year to $6.18, while its free cash flow came in at $784 million, down almost 91% from the year-ago period.

Meta Platforms is pouring a small fortune into its artificial intelligence (AI)-related ambitions, and it is impacting its margins and bottom line. It's no wonder that many people are running for the exit. However, recent comments from Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, should give investors some confidence that the company might eventually reap the benefits of these investments.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Meta Platforms' cloud business is in the works There have been reports in recent weeks suggesting that Meta Platforms is planning to rent out excess AI computing capacity to other data centers. Although it seems like a promising business endeavor, investors naturally had many questions. Here is just one of them: Can Meta Platforms successfully join the crowded cloud computing market and actually challenge the leaders in the niche, including the likes of Amazon (AMZN +15.32%), Microsoft (MSFT +3.02%), and Alphabet (GOOG +6.88%) (GOOGL +6.73%)? During the company's second-quarter earnings conference call, Zuckerberg addressed this concern, at least to some extent. Talking about the opportunity to sell computing capacity, he said:

We're getting a lot of offers for compute at a significant premium over what we paid for it.

These aren't unsubstantiated claims either. Meta Platforms is reportedly in early talks to rent out AI computing power to Anthropic, a privately held company and a leader in developing large language models. The deal is far from done, but the fact that it is in the works at all tells us something: Meta Platforms is exploring launching a cloud computing business because it sees demand for the kinds of services it hopes to provide.

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If the company can move forward with these plans, it may help justify the significant investments it is making in AI. This business could be a powerful growth driver over the medium term. According to some estimates, AI infrastructure spending will exceed $1 trillion by 2029, up from just $318 billion last year. Some of this spending will flow right into the kinds of services Meta Platforms wants to offer.

What does all this mean for the stock? Meta's core advertising business remains strong and continues to improve thanks to AI. The company also boasts a deep ecosystem, with 3.60 billion daily active users across its websites and apps, providing significant monetization opportunities. The tech giant's proposed cloud business could further boost sales and accelerate earnings growth. Since much of the investment has already been made, it would almost certainly lift the company's margins. This new growth opportunity is another reason investors should consider buying the stock on the dip.

Prosper Junior Bakiny has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.