Increasingly, Meta has been using debt to fuel its spending, amassing $59 billion in long-term debt on its balance sheet by the end of 2025, double the prior year’s total. And that doesn’t count the “aggressive” accounting it has used to keep the cost of a $27 billion Louisiana data center off its books. “The spending growth looks increasingly unsustainable,” The Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” columnist Asa Fitch wrote this week.

Now, as the company careens from one staggeringly expensive misadventure to another, its cash-cow core business is starting to wear out. Last quarter, the number of daily active users across its properties declined for the first time to 3.56 billion from 3.58 billion.

  • canniest_tod@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Is “dying” the right word? They’re struggling, but I won’t be surprised if this administration or the next bails Meta out, since fb and insta are essentially public services for a lot of people, as much as I hate that. The smart thing for the fed government to do is to nationalize Meta’s platforms.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      23 hours ago

      They’re not public services. They’re hostile psy-ops around the world, helping destabilise other governments.

      It’s high time other countries just outright blocked that cesspool, and Twitter while they’re at it.

      • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Right, so “public services”, as the filthy rich would sarcastically put it. Facebook is one of the major set of chains that bind, and direct us, none of them want to lose that.