Meta's Core Business Model Revolves Around Monetizing User Information and Attention

A. To maximize profit, Meta’s business model focuses on increasing young users’ engagement.

1. Meta monetizes young users’ attention through data harvesting and targeted advertising.

54. Meta’s core business model across its Social Media Platforms is monetizing user information and attention by increasing engagement, otherwise known as time spent, on its Platforms. Meta is constantly striving to sustain and increase user engagement on its Platforms so that it can sell more and better advertising opportunities to paying advertisers.

55. Meta generates most of its revenue from advertisers, who are able to use targeted advertising based on the personal data Meta collects for each user. As Meta’s CFO David Wehner indicated in a January 2019 earnings call: In terms of our ability to continue to grow the advertising business, it’s about working to develop the best—the best products we can to enable advertisers to achieve their end business results. Targeting obviously very is [sic] important in that.

56. When Meta succeeds in maintaining a user’s interest through its recommendation algorithms—thus keeping the user on a Platform for a longer time—Meta can collect more data on the user and serve the user more advertisements.

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58. Increasing the time spent on Meta’s Platforms increases the effective delivery of targeted ads—a pivotal factor in Meta’s ability to generate revenue. In an April 2019 earnings call, Meta’s CFO noted, “we’re relying on continuing to improve targeting. And so you’ve got— the risk there is of course the headwinds that we talked about on the ad targeting front and how that will play into U.S. growth as well.”

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61. Advertisers do not have long-term commitments to Meta’s Platforms. Accordingly, Meta must continue to deliver ads in an effective manner to retain paying advertisers and maintain and increase its revenue.

62. Meta has emphasized ad effectiveness as a top priority for future growth. As thenChief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told investors on a 2019 earnings call, “[o]ver time our systems will do a better job deciding where your ads should be placed and even helping you target. And so you’re seeing us build tools in that direction as well.”

63. As Meta noted in its 2021 Annual Report to the SEC, “[t]he size of our user base and our users’ level of engagement across our products are critical to our success.” It noted that factors affecting Meta’s revenue generation include (1) “user engagement, including time spent on [Meta’s] products”; (2) increasing “user access to and engagement with [Meta’s] products”; (3) Meta’s ability “to maintain or increase the quantity or quality of ads shown to users”; (4) maintaining traffic to monetized features like the “Feed” and “Stories”; (5) the “effectiveness of [Meta’s] ad targeting”; and (6) the degree to which users engage with Meta’s ads.

64. Meta’s Recommendation Algorithms were designed with its business purpose in mind, namely, to capture users’ attention and keep them engaged on the Platforms.

65. These algorithms do not promote any specific message by Meta. Rather, the algorithms function on a user-by-user basis, detecting the material each individual is likely to engage with and then increasingly displaying similar material to maximize the time spent (and user data collected) on the Platforms.

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67. Meta’s algorithms apply not only to material generated by users but also to advertisements. As Sandberg expressed in a 2019 earnings call, “[a]cross all of our platforms and formats, we’re investing in AI [artificial intelligence] to make ads more relevant and effective. In Q4, we developed new AI ranking models to help people see ads they’re more likely to be interested in.”