Meta reports first revenue decline and 36 percent profit drop.

Even as the company was battered by scandals over privacy and misinformation, its sales continued to grow.

It's no longer possible.

Meta reported a 1 percent decline in revenue from the previous year. It was the first time that the social media giant's revenue had fallen since it went public a decade ago as it faces increased regulatory scrutiny and a turbulent economy while trying to build a new frontier of digital communication

Revenue for the second quarter was down from a year ago. The profit was down from a year ago. Wall Street analysts had predicted profits of $7.06 billion on revenue of $28.9 billion.

On Wednesday Meta was sued by the FTC over a deal to buy a virtual reality company called Within. The lawsuit directly strikes at the ambitions of Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's founder and chief executive, who has been spending billions of dollars to create an immersive world of social interaction in the "Metaverse", which is a combination of virtual and augmented realities that will be bound by commerce and online

The vision for the metaverse will take a long time to come to fruition, and it will be expensive. Some investors don't think the effort will work in the long run.

There were some positives in the report. The company's daily active people increased by 4% from a year ago. Analysts expected the company to lose visitors. User growth within the United States was seen by some as being saturated.

The Reels video product, which is similar to TikTok's video offering, is one of the areas that Mr. Zuckerberg was encouraged by. More people were using the service because of the investments in artificial intelligence recommendations.

He said that it was good to see positive trajectory on engagement trends from products like Reels and investments in A.I. We are putting increased energy and focus on our key company priorities that will allow us to better serve the people and businesses that use our services.