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Bank of New York Mellon Corp lessened its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 2.3% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 13,833,621 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 320,215 shares during the period. Meta Platforms comprises approximately 1.3% of Bank of New York Mellon Corp’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 10th largest holding. Bank of New York Mellon Corp owned 0.55% of Meta Platforms worth $7,792,340,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. RHL Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the fourth quarter worth about $28,000. Advantage Trust Co purchased a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 2nd quarter valued at about $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new position in Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth about $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth about $29,000. Finally, Axiom Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms during the first quarter worth approximately $36,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent that can interact with Facebook, Instagram and third-party applications to perform tasks such as sending emails, booking travel, shopping and making payments. The product includes free and paid subscription tiers, offering a potential new revenue stream beyond digital advertising. Meta launches AI agent that can access other apps to send emails, make payments Positive Sentiment: The rollout follows the release of Muse Spark 1.3, a model aimed at coding and extended agentic tasks. Investors viewed the development as evidence that Meta’s substantial AI investment could eventually generate financial returns; Bank of America reportedly continues to see meaningful upside in the stock. Meta stock jumps 4% after Muse Spark 1.3: why BofA still sees 32% upside Positive Sentiment: Meta and Panmnesia proposed a data-center architecture designed to connect computing resources more tightly for extremely large AI models. The initiative supports Meta’s strategy of building extensive AI infrastructure and could improve long-term computing efficiency. One Chip, One Datacenter: Meta and Panmnesia Extend Tight Coupling Beyond the Rack with CXL Neutral Sentiment: Analysts and investors remain divided over Meta’s large AI infrastructure spending, reportedly including a potential $130 billion capital-expenditure commitment. Strong advertising growth and user monetization support the investment case, but the scale of spending raises execution and return-on-investment concerns. Wall Street Keeps Asking How Much Meta Will Spend Negative Sentiment: Muse increases Meta’s exposure to privacy, security and consumer-trust concerns because it can access sensitive information and act across other applications. Reports noted internal concerns about potential misuse or mishandling of personal data, which could increase regulatory and reputational risks. Meta pushes into personal AI agents as company faces public reckoning over privacy and safety Negative Sentiment: Meta faces continuing legal pressure, including a reported lawsuit alleging facial-recognition data was used to train smart-glasses systems. Separately, the company’s chief accounting officer sold 3,240 shares under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan; the planned nature of the sale reduces its significance, but insider selling may weigh modestly on sentiment. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several analysts have commented on the company. Robert W. Baird dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Weiss Ratings lowered Meta Platforms from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research report on Friday, June 26th. Cantor Fitzgerald dropped their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $680.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Bank of America cut their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $810.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Phillip Securities upgraded shares of Meta Platforms to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, August 3rd. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have issued a Buy rating and nine have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.22. Read Our Latest Stock Report on META

Meta Platforms Stock Performance Shares of NASDAQ:META opened at $613.48 on Wednesday. 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 business’s 50 day moving average price is $598.23 and its 200-day moving average price is $608.68. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.56 trillion, a PE ratio of 23.11, a P/E/G ratio of 1.07 and a beta of 1.25. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 1 year low of $520.26 and a 1 year high of $790.80.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The firm 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 business posted $7.14 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Transactions at Meta Platforms 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 value of $4,379,184.00. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 828 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $462,024. This trade represents a 90.46% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 3,348 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.97, for a total value of $2,012,047.56. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer owned 9,498 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,708,013.06. This trade represents a 26.06% 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. In the last quarter, insiders sold 36,227 shares of company stock valued at $21,205,509. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc develops technologies that help people connect, communicate and build communities online. The company’s principal products include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and digital communication.

Meta generates most of its business through advertising displayed across its family of apps. It also develops artificial intelligence technologies, business messaging tools and hardware and software through its Reality Labs division, including Quest virtual- and mixed-reality devices and related experiences.

The company was founded as Facebook in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and was renamed Meta Platforms in 2021 to reflect its broader focus on building the metaverse.

See Also Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Wasn’t the Moment Investors Expected Despite Post-Earnings Drop, Wall Street Analysts Eye New Highs for Broadcom Stock Morgan Stanley Eyes Good Things Ahead for Meta After $18 Billion Legal Settlement Q3 Earnings Could Be the Catalyst the Market Has Been Waiting For Want to see what other hedge funds are holding META? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report).

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Meta Platforms NASDAQ: META just settled a legal headache that has cast a significant shadow over the firm and the stock. The company agreed to pay up to $18 billion over the course of a decade to end its youth social media addiction trial. With this case behind it, one of Wall Street’s top sell-side analysts believes Meta may be at an inflection point.

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Morgan Stanley Thinks Meta Could Walk in Alphabet’s FootstepsBrian Nowak of Morgan Stanley anticipates that the end of the trial will usher in a wave of new product releases at Meta. This would represent a positive development for the firm, as a notable issue with the company’s AI strategy is the relatively few product releases it has announced with real revenue-generating potential.

Meta Platforms Today

$613.48 -3.29 (-0.53%)

As of 09/8/2026 04:00 PM Eastern

$520.26▼

$790.800.34%

23.11

$785.22

Nowak has a laundry list of products he believes are in Meta’s pipeline. This includes agentic advertising tools for businesses, subscription offerings, a better version of Meta AI, and a potential cloud business. Nowak estimates that these products and services could add $10 to Meta’s earnings per share (EPS).

If this materializes over time, it would be a very significant growth driver for Meta’s EPS. Notably, in 2025, the company’s adjusted EPS was $29.68, and its GAAP EPS was $23.49. Depending on which metric Nowak is referencing, his forecast implies a 34% to 43% uplift in these figures.

Nowak cites Alphabet’s NASDAQ: GOOGL recent history as a reason Meta could start releasing more products now. This time last year, Alphabet resolved its antitrust case with the Justice Department, after which it began releasing many AI tools and models. The stock went on to perform very well in Q4 2025, rising 29%.

To Meta’s Credit: Muse Models Are Flying off the Factory LineWhile Meta’s overall number of AI product releases has been underwhelming, the company has made some meaningful progress on this front recently. In the last five months, Meta has released five new Muse models, including Muse Glimmer and its latest Muse Spark 1.3 in September. This pace of model releases is impressive, rivaling the cadence of OpenAI and Anthropic.

Additionally, Meta is now charging for access to its models on a pay-as-you-go basis, which could meaningfully contribute to revenue. This comes as Muse Spark 1.3 ranks highly on a variety of key AI model benchmarks. According to model evaluation by Artificial Analysis, Muse Spark 1.3 ranks only below OpenAI and Anthropic’s frontier models on its Intelligence Index. The closer Meta can stay to OpenAI's and Anthropic’s models in terms of intelligence, the more likely it will be to attract paying users.

Furthermore, Meta’s ability to attract paying users should be aided by the model’s much lower price. Artificial Analysis places Muse Spark 1.3’s cost per Intelligence Index task approximately 50% to 80% below OpenAI and Anthropic’s frontier models. Of course, these lower prices may also result in significantly lower-margin sales. Nonetheless, Meta is gaining real momentum with its product releases. It is possible that the end of its legal case will allow management to focus more energy on products and help this momentum to continue.

Youth Restrictions Could Be a Minimal Near-Term IssueNowak also made another notable point regarding the implications of Meta’s legal case. As part of its settlement, Meta will have to implement certain features for youth accounts. This includes a two-hour daily time limit across Facebook and Instagram, and blocking usage from midnight to six a.m. These features will likely decrease youth engagement on Meta’s apps, and engagement is the heart of Meta’s business model.

However, according to Morgan Stanley, users under 18 account for just 1% of Meta’s revenue. If accurate, this implies that reduced youth engagement will have a very minimal impact on Meta’s revenue generation in the near term. Still, there could be longer-term negative revenue impacts if these features cause young people to stop using their apps altogether and stay off as they age.

Meta Platforms Stock Forecast Today12-Month Stock Price Forecast:
$785.22
27.99% Upside

Moderate Buy
Based on 47 Analyst Ratings

Current Price$613.48High Forecast$1,000.00Average Forecast$785.22Low Forecast$595.00Meta Platforms Stock Forecast Details

Analysts Coalesce Around Nowak’s Bullish Price TargetOverall, Morgan Stanley clearly has a favorable view of Meta going forward, demonstrated by its $775 price target on the stock. This figure implies about 20% upside in shares.

Morgan Stanley is not alone on this front. Even after seeing some considerable price target decreases after its latest earnings report, Meta still has 38 Buy ratings, compared to nine Hold ratings and zero Sells. The MarketBeat consensus price target is moderately higher than Nowak’s forecast at approximately $785.

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META buy

Buy Meta (NASDAQ: META). Muse Spark 1.3 is concrete proof of faster, cheaper agentic coding (fewer tool calls/tokens) and better long-horizon performance—exactly what Meta needs to turn AI spend into ad targeting, recommendations, and developer tools. BofA’s 32% upside case is supported by the valuation still lagging the earnings power implied by improved ad efficiency and lower inference costs from MTIA chips.

Key Risk: Meta’s AI upgrades fail to show up in ad pricing/engagement and margins—AI costs keep rising faster than revenue, so the multiple compresses.

GOOG buy

Buy Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG). If Meta’s agentic models improve ad targeting and developer tooling, the competitive pressure shifts to search/ads efficiency. Alphabet’s stronger cash generation and diversified ad stack let it defend share while benefiting from the industry’s push toward better AI-driven ad relevance and automation.

Key Risk: Meta’s AI actually boosts ad performance enough to take meaningful share and force Alphabet to spend more to catch up, hurting margins.

Meta stock NASDAQ:META jumped sharply after the company released Muse Spark 1.3, giving investors evidence that its AI spending may eventually produce returns.

The model is designed for coding and longer-running agentic tasks. Meta says it uses roughly 20% fewer tool calls and 25% fewer tokens than Muse Spark 1.2 in comparable engineering work.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post remains bullish. He has a Buy rating and an $810 price target, implying about 32% upside from Meta’s September 3 close of $610.68.

The debate is whether those advances can justify the infrastructure bill behind them.

Meta has spent much of 2026 facing questions over whether AI investment is outrunning commercially useful progress.

Muse Spark 1.3 gives bulls something more concrete.

Meta says the model handles longer-horizon tasks better, manages multiple workflows in one thread and improves coding efficiency. It is available through Muse Code and the Meta Model API.

Bernstein reiterated an Outperform rating and an $800 target, arguing that Meta’s AI-enhanced advertising engine remains a major advantage. The firm believes Meta is on track to rival or surpass Google Search in advertising revenue.

Meta does not need Muse Spark to become a standalone business on OpenAI’s scale.

Better models can improve recommendations, ad targeting, engagement and developer tools across Meta’s apps. The payoff can appear inside its existing profit engine rather than only through model sales.

Bank of America’s case rests on the gap between Meta’s execution and valuation.

Post highlighted Meta’s rapid model-release cadence and said the agentic improvements matter as the company develops a consumer AI agent internally known as Hatch.

There is also a hardware angle.

BofA estimates Meta’s planned MTIA custom-chip deployments could eventually represent 15% to 20% of its total AI capacity. Greater reliance on in-house silicon could lower computing costs as workloads expand.

At around $617 when BofA made its case, Meta traded near 18 times projected 2027 GAAP earnings, below its historical multiple of roughly 21 times and the broader market.

BofA’s $810 target is based on 24 times projected 2027 earnings.

The risk is that Meta’s AI bill remains enormous.

Its infrastructure push is raising fixed costs and pressuring margins and free cash flow, meaning new model releases must eventually translate into measurable economic returns.

KeyBanc remains constructive but more conservative, as the firm cut its target to $760 from $855 while keeping an Overweight rating.

KeyBanc said Meta Superintelligence Labs had made “meaningful progress” with Muse Spark and argued investors were “under-appreciating platform stickiness” among consumers and advertisers.

But the burden of proof keeps rising.

Investors will want evidence that Muse Spark gains adoption, that agents such as Hatch become useful products, and that MTIA chips reduce computing costs.

Texas stopped approving additional grid hookups as bipartisan scrutiny intensifies over power, water, rural development and incentives. Summary

Meta’s massive El Paso expansion now faces a tougher political path.

Meta Platforms META, the social-media and artificial-intelligence giant, hit a Texas-sized political wall Thursday, with shares trading at $611.62. Its planned El Paso data-center campus will cost more than $10 billion, but lawmakers from both parties are turning up the pressure on Big Tech's expansion. Reuters reported that Gov. Greg Abbott wants tougher restrictions, fewer incentives and tighter limits on rural development. The state has approved no additional grid hookups since an August 3 audit. Meta has the money. Texas controls the power switch.

This is no ordinary server farm. Meta's project plan calls for one gigawatt of computing capacity, with the first phase expected online in 2028. Meta will initially occupy the entire facility. Construction could support more than 4,000 jobs at its peak, followed by approximately 300 permanent positions. That is a powerful economic pitch. But jobs alone may not overpower concerns about electricity, water and taxpayer incentives.

The disclosed investment equals at least 7.3% of Meta's $137.5 billion annual capital-expenditure midpoint, although construction will span multiple periods. The company spent $31.08 billion on capital expenditures last quarter while generating only $784 million in free cash flow. The valuation gap is hard to ignore: at $611.62, Meta trades 27.78% below its $846.92 GF Value™, pointing to substantial potential upside if its AI infrastructure bet delivers. The upside looks tempting. The spending pressure—and now the political resistance—looks just as real.

Disclosures I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and have no plans to buy any new positions in the stocks mentioned within the next 72 hours.

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Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) shares climbed more than 4% on Thursday after the company unveiled an upgraded version of its flagship AI model, which its AI chief says now matches offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI.

The new model, Muse Spark 1.3, marks Meta's "biggest jump so far on model performance," according to Alexandr Wang, the company's AI chief.

Meta said the update improves agentic and coding capabilities and is designed to be easier to use in everyday scenarios.

Developers can already access and pay for Muse Spark 1.3, with availability on Meta's social platforms and Meta AI to follow.

In a blog post, Meta said Muse Spark 1.3 delivers improved performance across agentic and coding tasks, building on lessons learned from months of adoption of Muse Code and the Meta Model API. The company said the model is also easier to use in real-world settings.

"Smarter and more practically useful, Muse Spark 1.3 advances our work toward personal superintelligence," Meta said.

The model is rolling out in Muse Code and the Meta Model API. Previously available reasoning modes are live now, with a max reasoning mode expected shortly once additional safety testing is complete.

Meta said Muse Spark 1.3 is designed to handle open-ended, longer-horizon tasks by pulling context from varied sources, correcting its own plan as it goes, and delivering a final result across a single extended thread.

Meta said its roadmap ahead includes larger models and an open weights release for Muse Spark, among other developments.

Meta's landmark settlement in its child safety trial will precipitate the most significant change to its social media platforms for teen users ever.

The social media giant's settlement with more than 40 states plus the District of Columbia and multiple territories, includes up to $17 billion in payments over 10 years, changes to the apps for teens and stricter age assurances.

"It's the highest amount of money ever paid in a case like this," California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the trial, told CNBC in an interview after the settlement. "And $17 billion can do a lot of good to prevent and remediate mental health harms for kids."

Perhaps even more meaningful for Meta, which generated $201 billion in revenue last year, it must implement a range of product changes for users ages 13-17.

The list includes a two-hour default limit for time spent on its app, blocking the apps between midnight and 6 a.m., and muting notifications during school hours. Teen users will also have likes hidden, cosmetic filters disabled, and the option to control autoplay of videos as well as the ability to opt for a non-algorithmic feed.

Meta said it'll roll out many of the default protections in the next six months, but it will take up to a year to introduce age assurances — stricter age verification requirements to keep kids off its platforms and accurately identify teens who have lied about their age.

To address this complex problem, Meta is building a new prediction model to determine users who are under 13 or in the range of 13-17 by pulling in data like who they're connected to, who they follow and who their followers are, as well as the likes of happy birthday greetings.

Age verification — especially without facial recognition, which Meta doesn't use — is notoriously tough. The challenge has prompted a debate between Meta and app store owners Apple and Google about which entity should be responsible. Meta has also been working on age-gating technology in Australia to comply with laws banning social media for kids under age 16, but teens are finding workarounds.

After years of denying that its products negatively impacted kids, Meta's now trying to be a leader in a wave of changes, and is calling on rivals YouTube and Snap to join them.

Meta will pay $5.3 billion of its $17 billion settlement only if TikTok and YouTube agree to pay the same, and also set default limits of an hour on their apps, which Meta said it would then adopt. TikTok and YouTube have not responded to Meta or to CNBC's request for comment.

Not everyone is satisfied with this $17 billion settlement, which is just a fraction of the $200 billion that the state AGs were originally pursuing.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who did not participate in the settlement and is pursuing separate litigation against Meta, told CNBC he was frustrated with the five-year commitment Meta made for some features and 10 years for others.

"Child protection is not a short-term, temporary goal. They violated Florida law, and our law is not temporary, it's permanent. These changes need to be permanent," Uthmeier said.

Meta still faces other lawsuits, as do other social media companies, but questions remain about how much the teen changes will affect its bottom line.

Meta has said that teens generate less than 1% of its revenue and eMarketer reports that teens spend less time on Instagram and Facebook than they do on TikTok and YouTube. But the added restrictions could drive teen users of Instagram and Facebook to other platforms without restrictions, impacting Meta's appeal to these teens once they grow into adults, who are far more valuable in terms of ad revenue.

"Kids are extremely valuable to Meta," said Kelly Stonelake, a former Meta director who is now a child safety advocate. "It's actually pretty devastating to Meta's current strategy to limit the kind of hooks that they can put into young people."

Watch the video to find out how Meta will pull off massive changes to its platforms.

PJM yanked a Meta-backed nuclear campus from its grid queue, hitting Oklo with a company-specific blow on top of a sector already reeling from surging Treasury yields. How those two pressures compound tells investors something important about every pre-revenue reactor…

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Two separate stories are stacked on the nuclear sector today, and Oklo (NYSE:OKLO | OKLO Price Prediction) sits at the center of both. Rising long-term Treasury yields are pressuring every pre-revenue reactor developer, and Oklo carries an added company-specific hit after PJM Interconnection pulled its Meta-backed Ohio project from the grid queue.

Oklo stock is down 5% to $38.46 in early afternoon trading, a fresh reminder that the shares were already down 43% year to date (YTD) through Monday’s close. The move sets Oklo apart from the rest of the sector today.

Meanwhile, NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) stock is down 0.8% to $9.20, barely moving despite Oklo’s slide. Centrus Energy (NYSE:LEU) stock is down 3% to $166.53, tracking the sector rather than Oklo’s project-specific news.

FERC Complaint Over Meta-Backed Ohio Queue Oklo filed an emergency complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday, August 28, arguing that PJM Interconnection improperly removed a 750-megawatt generating project from its interconnection study cycle. The project combines 150 megawatts of advanced nuclear generation, 300 megawatts of fuel cells, and 300 megawatts of gas-fired generation.

PJM withdrew the project on August 3, citing application shortcomings that included Oklo not showing its project could ride through a sudden drop in grid voltage. Oklo says the removal will delay the project by at least 14 months and significantly increase development costs, that the deficiencies are fixable, and that PJM violated its own tariff by failing to flag problems and allow a chance to cure them.

The project sits inside Oklo’s planned 1.2-gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) agreed in January to back the campus, which is intended to supply its data centers.

PJM spokesman Jeffrey Shields said the grid operator doesn’t comment on individual interconnection applications, and noted that nearly 90% of the 811 projects submitting new service requests met the requirements to be studied in the most recent cycle. The most probable outcome from here remains a project delay.

Rates Weigh on the Wider Nuclear Complex A global bond selloff has lifted the 10-year Treasury note yield to 4.786%, above its prior one-year high of 4.75% set on July 31. Pre-revenue nuclear developers are long-duration assets whose value sits years out, so they discount harder as yields rise.

Also, Global X Uranium ETF (NYSEARCA:URA) is down 3% to $44.16, tracking the broader repricing across uranium and nuclear names. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is down 0.7% to $761.68, a milder pullback that highlights how much pressure sits in duration-sensitive corners of the market.

The nuclear complex is falling harder than the broad market, and Oklo is falling harder than the nuclear complex. The pressure on Oklo today comes from grid interconnection, an execution risk that runs across every pre-revenue nuclear developer regardless of how sound its reactor design (we mapped five ways to play the restart, utilities and fuel included, in a free nuclear guide).

What to Watch Oklo asked FERC to restore its original queue position and to order PJM to respond by September 4, and PJM plans to file its response by Friday. Interconnection queue position is an unglamorous variable that decides whether any of these reactors ever sells power, and it now sits alongside licensing and construction as something to track.

Position sizing on Oklo stock should reflect that queue removal can compound with rising discount rates to widen drawdowns. Investors holding existing shares can trim into strength if the FERC response arrives on schedule, while new buyers can wait for clarity on whether the Ohio queue slot is restored.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

BOCHK Asset Management Ltd grew its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 6.9% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 21,550 shares of the social networking company’s stock after purchasing an additional 1,400 shares during the period. Meta Platforms comprises about 1.9% of BOCHK Asset Management Ltd’s portfolio, making the stock its 12th biggest position. BOCHK Asset Management Ltd’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $12,139,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the business. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 17.4% during the first quarter. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC now owns 18,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $10,299,000 after purchasing an additional 2,670 shares in the last quarter. Keybank National Association OH boosted its holdings in 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 in the last quarter. WMS Group LLC purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $876,000. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its position in 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 period. Finally, Czech National Bank raised its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 4.9% during the 2nd quarter. Czech National Bank now owns 625,079 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $352,101,000 after buying an additional 29,411 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta’s AI strategy remains a potential long-term catalyst. Analysts point to its roughly $60 billion AI investment program as a way to improve ad targeting, monetization and possibly challenge Google in search and digital advertising. Meta’s $60 Billion AI Machine Could Dethrone Google Search by Year-End Positive Sentiment: Meta-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms received regulatory approval for an initial public offering. A successful listing could provide a valuation reference for Meta’s investment and highlight the value of its strategic holdings. Meta- and Google-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms gets regulatory nod for IPO Positive Sentiment: Some investment commentary describes META as undervalued after its shares fell well below their prior record, citing second-quarter revenue growth of 28% to $60.8 billion and the potential for a recovery. Prediction: Meta Stock Reclaims Its All-Time High Before 2029 Neutral Sentiment: Meta has begun removing fraudulent advertisements in India that used explicit content to distribute malware. The action limits immediate user risk but underscores continuing challenges in ad-quality enforcement and platform trust. Meta removes ads for fraud apps posing as porn after India sounds alarm Negative Sentiment: Meta agreed to an approximately $17 billion to $18 billion settlement with U.S. states over allegations that its platforms harmed children and teens. The agreement requires stronger age verification and other safeguards, creating a substantial financial cost and potentially higher compliance expenses. Explainer: Settlement requires Meta to check young users’ ages Negative Sentiment: Research claiming Temu spent as much as $962 million on advertising tied to fake creators raises additional concerns about content moderation, advertiser oversight and reputational risk on Meta’s platforms. Temu spent up to $962 million on ads that helped finance an army of fake creators on Meta platforms Meta Platforms Stock Performance Shares of META opened at $572.34 on Tuesday. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 12-month low of $520.26 and a 12-month high of $790.80. The stock has a market cap of $1.46 trillion, a P/E ratio of 21.56, a PEG ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a current ratio of 2.23, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. The company has a 50-day moving average of $592.45 and a two-hundred day moving average of $610.45. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share 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 business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same period last year, the business earned $7.14 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of research firms recently weighed in on META. Weiss Ratings downgraded Meta Platforms from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research note on Friday, June 26th. TD Cowen cut their price objective 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. Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $810.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Monday, June 1st. Guggenheim restated a “buy” rating and set a $800.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Arete Research set a $735.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, June 2nd. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have issued a Buy rating and nine have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.22.

Check Out Our Latest Research Report on Meta Platforms

Insider Buying and Selling at Meta Platforms In other news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,196 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total transaction of $5,063,409.56. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 13,186 shares in the company, valued at $7,260,343.46. The trade was a 41.09% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available 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 the business’s 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 completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 1,517 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $910,200. This represents a 45.33% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. 13.53% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

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.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Securing AI: 5 Most-Upgraded Stocks From the Q2 Reporting Season Insiders Are Betting Big on These 3 Healthcare Stocks 3 Stocks for Investors Who Still Believe Cash Is King Dollar General and Dollar Tree Are Recovering, But Not for the Same Reason Want to see what other hedge funds are holding META? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report).

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Meta (META.O) has agreed to improve how it verifies the age of users of its platforms such as Facebook and Instagram as part of an $18 billion legal settlement with ​U.S. states that is aimed at curbing children's use of social media.

Here is a look at what Meta said it will do to ensure that users are ‌as old as they say they are, and some of the legal issues that could complicate age checks.

Meta policy bars children under 13 from using Facebook or Instagram and permits teenagers to use the platforms with some limits on content. Meta has acknowledged that younger users sometimes lie about their ages when creating accounts, and the company has faced increasing pressure from countries around the world to limit children's access to social media.

Meta has ​not historically asked users for proof of age such as a photo ID. Instead the company said it looks at contextual clues, like birthday posts or celebrations of school grades, ​to identify accounts that are being used by children.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in February that age verification would be more effective if it was handled ⁠by makers of mobile devices, an approach taken by a Texas state law that requires people under 18 to get parental consent before downloading an age-restricted app onto their device.

Meta agreed to the multi-state ​settlement, announced on August 26, to resolve legal claims that it designed social media platforms to addict children.

The settlement requires Meta to make broad changes related to users ​under 18, such as setting daily usage limits and disabling push notifications at night. It also calls for stronger age checks for young users, but it does not require Meta to take strict verification steps such as checking the photo IDs of users or asking them to upload a video selfie.

The settlement focuses particular attention on age checks for children below age 13, requiring Meta to take extra steps such as searching the friend networks of the ​accounts of the youngest users in an effort to identify and eliminate them. The company must also make it easier for social media users to report suspected children's accounts, and it allows an ​independent auditor to review Meta's efforts to check ages.

The settlement allows Meta to temporarily use some data generated by children it identifies in order to train an AI model to detect under-13 users in the future, similar ‌to its current ⁠approach for identifying the accounts of suspected teenagers.

WHAT ARE THE LEGAL HURDLES IN DETERMINING AGES?
Meta has previously described both legal and practical roadblocks to stricter age assurance, including a 1998 federal law called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. This statute holds companies liable for damages if they collect personal data from children under age 13 without parental consent.

Meta and other social media companies have argued that this law puts them in a bind because it restricts them from collecting from children the kind of data that would reliably verify a person's age, such as IDs, biometric information or detailed records ​of their online activity.

Experts who advocate for better ​protections for children online have argued that social ⁠media companies have tried to use COPPA as a distraction to avoid taking responsibility for allowing children onto their platforms.

DOES THE SETTLEMENT ADDRESS CHILDREN'S PRIVACY?
The $18 billion settlement, as well as a $942 million judgment in a New Mexico court case on August 6, have attempted to thread the needle, requiring more proactive age-verification ​measures without triggering potential violations of COPPA.

In New Mexico, the judge concluded that the online-privacy law restricted him from ordering Meta to ask ​children to submit personal data ⁠or be passively tracked online, and said that strict age-verification requirements could put Meta at an unfair disadvantage to social media competitors. So the judge ordered changes intended to improve age assurances "within the limits of COPPA." The settlement uses a similar approach.

The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces COPPA for the U.S. government, issued a policy statement in February that it would not take action against any company that collects personal information for the ⁠sole purpose of ​determining a user's age via age-verification technologies.

Legal experts said that the FTC policy provides only a partial shield for companies ​because U.S. states have their own authority to enforce COPPA violations even when the FTC declines to do so.

Several states had sued Meta, alleging online-privacy violations, but dropped those claims as part of the settlement.

Meta Platforms (META +1.21%) is once again releasing some of its artificial intelligence (AI) models with open weights, allowing developers to download and modify them.

The company released Muse Glimmer, a 30-billion-parameter model, on Aug. 10. However, as of Aug. 25, the company had not yet released the weights for its more powerful flagship model, Muse Spark 1.2.

So, does Meta Platforms' heavy investment in AI infrastructure make sense if it plans to make more of its AI models publicly available?

Image source: Getty Images.

Earning money from AI without selling models Unlike OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta Platforms does not need to rely primarily on subscriptions, application programming interfaces (APIs), and enterprise software to monetize its AI models directly. Instead, the company is leveraging AI to improve recommendations and advertising across Facebook and Instagram. The company is also developing business messaging and AI-agent opportunities through WhatsApp and Messenger.

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Meta Platforms' AI strategy is already showing results. In the second quarter (ended June 30), improvements to its AI models generated an 8.3% increase in Facebook ad clicks and a 15.7% rise in ad conversions. Additionally, an early Instagram AI pilot increased the number of users completing targeted in-app actions by 1%.

Heavy investment Meta Platforms' revenue grew 28% year over year to $60.8 billion, while operating cash flow was $31.9 billion in the second quarter. With the company's capital expenditures reaching $31.1 billion, free cash flow was only $784 million. Meta Platforms now expects $130 billion to $145 billion in capital spending in 2026, up from its initial $115 billion to $135 billion range.

Meta Platforms' spending commitments also extend well beyond 2026. The company had $81.6 billion of noncancelable contractual commitments due in 2027, mostly associated with cloud capacity and investments in technical infrastructure, data centers, and Reality Labs hardware. The company also entered into another $68 billion in data center leases, expected to begin in 2027 and 2028.

Meta Platforms' high spending could also weigh on future profit margins. Depreciation expense associated with property and equipment rose 40% year over year to $6 billion in the second quarter. Construction in progress also reached $80.3 billion, with most of those costs related to data centers, servers, and network infrastructure. As those assets come online, depreciation expenses could rise further, putting pressure on operating margins.

Reasonable valuation Meta Platforms is currently trading at around 16.8 times analysts' expected 2027 earnings per share of $33.9 (as of Aug. 25). The valuation appears reasonable, considering the company may not need significant user growth for its AI investments to pay off. With 3.6 billion people already using Meta Platforms' apps daily, even relatively small improvements in user engagement and ad conversion can potentially translate into meaningful revenue gains.

However, this advantage has a limit. Much of the growth in the number of ads Meta shows is coming from lower-monetization markets such as Asia-Pacific. Hence, local-language business agents are particularly important, since they may help the company generate more revenue from users in markets where advertising currently monetizes at lower rates.

So, AI needs to continue lifting revenue per user while capital spending and depreciation eventually moderate. Meta Platforms' forward earnings multiple leaves room for upside. But if AI spending remains elevated without a corresponding improvement in advertising monetization, the stock may struggle to grow.

Meta is quietly testing robots inside its data centers, and at least one employee believes physical workers are no longer safe from automation. The experiment hints at a much larger shift in how AI spending could reshape labor costs across…

Artificial intelligence was supposed to make workers more productive. Instead, companies are increasingly discovering that the most productive worker can be one they don’t have to employ. U.S. technology companies have eliminated nearly 140,000 jobs in 2026, according to a Financial Times analysis, even as the industry’s AI spending reaches unprecedented levels. 

Not every layoff can be blamed on AI — companies are also correcting pandemic-era excesses and cutting costs. But the direction of travel is difficult to miss. Now automation is moving beyond computer screens and into the physical world.

Meta’s Robots Are Coming for Data Center Jobs Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is already spending billions to build the infrastructure needed for its AI ambitions. Now it is exploring whether robots can help operate that infrastructure with fewer people.

According to a report from WIRED, Meta is testing robots that can swap networking cables, power-cycle servers, reseat hardware, and perform other tasks traditionally handled by data center technicians. The company is testing equipment from Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB at facilities including Altoona, Iowa, and New Albany, Ohio.

One Meta worker told WIRED that a successful cable-swapping robot could eventually replace up to 80% of some technicians’ workloads, according to one data center worker:

“We thought those of us performing the physical tasks were safe for a while, but not anymore. It’s coming for us all, unfortunately.”

The robots remain slower than humans in some applications, require supervision and battery charging, and struggle with complicated cabling. Still, the experiment matters because it attacks a cost that is becoming enormous as Meta expands its data center footprint.

Meta’s second-quarter 2026 results show just how much money is moving into that infrastructure. Revenue rose 28% year over year to $60.8 billion, while capital expenditures reached $31.1 billion in the quarter. The company now expects $130 billion to $145 billion of capital expenditures in 2026.

The most productive worker is the one you never have to hire. Automation has officially left the screen and entered the physical world, targeting a massive shift in the global workforce. AI Is Already Changing the Workforce. The Financial Times found that U.S. technology companies had gutted 140,000 jobs during 2026. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), Meta, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) accounted for almost 50,000 of those reductions. But the FT also cautioned that AI isn’t responsible for every job eliminated. Companies are restructuring, correcting previous overhiring, and redirecting spending toward AI infrastructure.

That’s an important distinction for investors. The bullish case for AI has always been that productivity gains will create new industries and new jobs, just as previous technological revolutions did. That could still happen. AI-focused companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI are hiring, while Meta itself shifted thousands of employees toward AI-related work even as it reduced its overall workforce.

But AI has one unusual characteristic: speed and scalability. Software can replace tasks performed by thousands of people almost instantly once it works. Robotics could eventually do the same thing in the physical economy.

The $1.7 Trillion Opportunity Citizens Bank estimates that Tesla‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Optimus humanoid robot could eventually target roughly $1.7 trillion of U.S. wages. That’s not a forecast for Tesla’s revenue, and much of that potential market remains years away. But it illustrates why investors are paying attention to physical AI.

The economic incentive is straightforward. If a robot can work around the clock, doesn’t require benefits, and performs repetitive tasks consistently, its value isn’t merely that it replaces a worker. It changes the economics of the entire operation.

For Meta, that could eventually mean fewer technicians supporting vastly larger data centers. For Tesla, it could mean a new manufacturing and robotics business. For investors, it creates another way to measure AI’s potential: not just how much revenue it generates, but how much labor it can eliminate per dollar of capital invested.

Key Takeaway In short, investors shouldn’t interpret Meta’s robot experiments as proof that data center technicians are about to disappear. The technology isn’t there yet.

The more important signal is that AI automation is moving from white-collar software work to physical labor. Meta’s 2026 capital-spending budget shows how aggressively the company is building AI infrastructure, and robots could eventually help it operate that infrastructure more efficiently.

That makes the long-term thesis for Meta more compelling — but also changes the way investors should think about AI. The biggest gains may not come from selling AI products. They may come from using AI to require fewer humans to produce the same output.

That’s a much bigger productivity story. And, potentially, a much bigger margin story.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Meta wants to change the public's perception of its smart glasses. picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images The small camera installed in Meta's AI smart glasses has become a problem for the company and the public.

Photos and videos captured by Meta glasses have proliferated on social media, and not all of them are consensual. Clips of content creators harassing women and recording their reactions covertly have become a trend, raising concerns about privacy.

"Are you a secret code?" one male content creator asked a woman in an Instagram video. "Because I'm trying to crack you." Some social media users have dubbed Meta's product "pervert glasses."

It's all a bad look for Meta. So the company is making moves to get ahead of the negativity. It has recently publicized new privacy settings for its glasses and has launched a PR blitz to explain them.

Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth posted an Instagram video on Friday, for example, in which he explained how the smart glasses' hands-free camera works.

Alex Schultz talks about Meta Ray-Ban Glasses and its 'big breakthrough' with the SuperBowl

"We designed this camera to be noticed by the people around you, so in every pair of glasses we make, there's a capture LED on the front, and it lights up when someone's taking photos or videos for the gallery," Bosworth said.

Bosworth said the camera has no off switch. It stops working if people try to cover or deactivate it.

"We took this issue all the way across Meta, and we've been taking down content and even whole accounts connected to people misusing the glasses," Bosworth said.

Alex Himel, the vice president of wearables at Meta, also attempted to calm nerves on Friday in a Threads post. He said Meta's smart glasses will not allow users to record if the camera's LED light is blocked before or during recording.

"We're going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone's gallery," Himel said.

While the company has suspended accounts that use the cameras to harass people, Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos reported last week that it hasn't been able to catch them all.

Meta has taken strides to make their smart glasses a must-have accessory. The company has partnered with megastars like Kylie Jenner and Teyana Taylor, and it produced a star-studded Super Bowl LX ad to drum up hype.

As AI smart glasses become increasingly accessible, some event and venue organizers are taking a cautious approach with guests. Burning Man told attendees at the 2026 festival, which starts Monday, that they can bring smart glasses, but must get consent before filming anyone. New York City nightclub Basement updated its no-photo-and-video policy to include smart eyewear.

"Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned," the venue said in an Instagram post on Friday.

Organizers for the DEFCON Hacking Conference told attendees in July that smart glasses and similar items are prohibited.

In his Instagram video, Bosworth urged users to watch for the LED light that indicates the cameras are recording.

"Please remember," he added, "the light is there for everyone."

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Lauren Edmonds is an award-winning reporter on the Business News team. When news isn't breaking, she covers personal finance, kitchen-table economics, and paths to financial freedom, including investing, real estate, side hustles, and small business. She also writes about guaranteed and universal basic income programs in the United States.Lauren has also covered lifestyle and entertainment, digital culture, and more. She has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and resides in New York City.Do you have an interesting story to tell? You can reach Lauren at [email protected] or on Signal at ledmonds0.07.Popular StoriesNetflix wants to be Disney when it grows up Why Hollywood is paying this 17-year-old up to $20,000 to boost film trailers with TikTok editsHere's all the free money Trump's talked about giving Americans during his second term — and where it all standsA 17-year-old earned $72,000 after investing his e-commerce profits into stocks. Here's why he bet on the tech industry.Lawmakers float a nationwide basic income experiment that would cover the cost of a 2-bedroom apartmentNearly 30,000 Americans have received about $335 million in basic income. Here are 5 takeaways. Americans ditch suffocating healthcare costs and divisive politics to retire in Italy: 'It's the way they approach life'From 'road-schooling' to gas that costs $500, this family of 4 shares what it's like living in a solar-powered Greyhound bus

Meta

Meta Platforms META , the social-media, digital-advertising and artificial-intelligence powerhouse, climbed approximately 1.5% to $557.875 Monday afternoon while semiconductor selling dragged the Nasdaq lower. That divergence matters. Investors were buying Meta's proven AI revenue machine while dumping technology companies carrying heavier expectations.

The numbers explain the confidence. Second-quarter revenue rocketed 28% to $60.8 billion as AI-powered advertising tools lifted engagement and pricing. Then came the gut punch: free cash flow crashed 91% to $784 million as Meta accelerated its infrastructure spending.

At roughly 21 times trailing earnings, Meta remains cheaper than several mega-cap rivals growing more slowly. The valuation gap looks enormous, with the $557.875 share price sitting 33.74% below the $841.91 GF Value™ estimate. But cheap does not mean painless. Capital expenditures are exploding, and a multistate youth-safety trial could force changes to the recommendation systems that keep users scrolling. For now, the advertising engine is winning the argument.

Key Takeaways Meta's ad revenues rose 27% to $59.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026. AI tools lifted Facebook ad clicks 8.3% and conversions 15.7% in the quarter. Reddit and Snap also posted ad growth, rising 64% and 9%, respectively, in Q2. Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) is benefiting from strong growth in its advertising business, strengthening its competitive position against Reddit (RDDT - Free Report) and Snap (SNAP - Free Report) . The company’s AI-driven ad tools, expanding user engagement and large advertiser base continue to drive higher ad spending across its family of apps.

In the second quarter of 2026, Meta reported $59.4 billion in ad revenues, up 27% year over year, with a 14% increase in ad impressions and a 12% rise in average price per ad. This growth is underpinned by Meta’s ability to deliver highly engaging experiences across its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, reaching 3.6 billion daily active users.

A key driver behind this success is Meta Platforms’ investment in artificial intelligence, particularly large language models that enhance content recommendations and ad targeting. These AI-powered systems allow Meta Platforms to show more relevant content and ads, resulting in higher conversions and better performance for advertisers.

In the second quarter of 2026, the deployment of Meta Generative Recommender and other advanced models led to an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook. More than 9 million small businesses now use at least one of Meta’s AI-powered ad creative tools. Its Advantage+ AI-powered advertising solutions also surpassed a $75 billion annual revenue run rate in the quarter, highlighting growing advertiser adoption.

Meta expects continued gains from AI-powered recommendations and advertising optimization. With strong user engagement, expanding AI capabilities and a massive advertiser base, META appears well-positioned to maintain its advertising momentum and stay ahead of RDDT and SNAP. For the third quarter of 2026, Meta expects revenues between $61 billion and $64 billion.

How Competitors Fare Against METADespite Meta Platforms’ expanding portfolio, the company faces stiff competition from Reddit and Snap. Both companies are expanding their footprint in the rapidly growing digital ad market.

Reddit is benefiting from strong demand in its advertising business, which has become a key growth driver of the company’s impressive financial performance and future growth prospects. In the second quarter of 2026, Reddit’s advertising revenues grew 64% year over year to $762 million, outpacing even its impressive total revenue growth of 61%. This growth is broad-based, with strength across various sales channels, including large customers, mid-market and small and medium-sized businesses.

Snap’s strong advertising revenue has been a major growth driver for the company. In the second quarter of 2026, Snap’s advertising revenues rose 9% year over year to $1.28 billion, reflecting improved momentum with large advertisers in North America, broader adoption of the company’s AI-powered Smart Campaign Solutions and continued strength among small and medium-sized businesses.

META’s Share Price Performance, Valuation, and EstimatesMETA’s shares have lost 16.7% in the year-to-date period, underperforming the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s return of 15.6%.

META Stock Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

META shares are cheap, with a forward 12-month Price/Sales of 4.87X compared with the Computer & Technology sector’s 6.36X. META has a Value Score of B.

META Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings is pegged at $31.90 per share, which has decreased 3.47% over the past 30 days. This suggests 35.80% year-over-year growth.

Meta Platforms currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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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