Facebook owner Meta to lay off 11,000 staff

Author: AFP

Facebook owner Meta will lay off more than 11,000 of its staff in “the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. He said the cuts represented 13 percent of the social media titan’s workforce and would affect its research lab focusing on the metaverse as well as its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The tech industry is in a serious slump and several major firms have announced mass layoffs — Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk fired half its staff last week. “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg said in a note to staff. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.” Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Google are suffering with advertisers looking to cut costs as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates. Zuckerberg told 87,000-strong staff he had expected the boost in e-commerce and online activity during the Covid pandemic to continue, but added: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” The downturn has affected companies across the sector, with Apple and Amazon also recently announcing results that disappointed investors. But Meta also faces some unique problems of its own. The California-based company is being squeezed by Zuckerberg’s decision to devote billions of dollars to developing the metaverse, an immersive version of the web accessed via virtual reality headsets.

Share
Leave a Comment

Recent Posts

  • Editorial

Wheat Woes

Months after a witty, holier-than-thou, jack-of-all-trades caretaker government retreated from the executive, repeated horrors from…

5 hours ago
  • Editorial

Modi’s Tricks

For all those hoping to see matured Pak-India relations enter a new chapter of normalisation,…

5 hours ago
  • Cartoons

TODAY’S CARTOON

5 hours ago
  • Op-Ed

Exceptionally Incendiary Rhetoric

Narendra Modi is seeking the premiership of the country for the record third time. The…

5 hours ago
  • Op-Ed

Fading folio, rising screens – II

The ASER 2023 report findings further indicate that the highest level of learning for Urdu…

5 hours ago
  • Op-Ed

Populists and Polarized Democracies – II

Another major theme of the populists' strategy is to deliberately invoke hate and social schism…

5 hours ago