Facebook spent over $13 billion on safety, security since 2016

Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it has invested more than $13 billion in safety and security measures since 2016, days after a newspaper reported the company had failed to fix “the platform’s ill effects” researchers had identified.

The social media giant said it now has 40,000 people working on safety and security, compared with 10,000 five years ago.

Facebook played down the negative effects on young users of its Instagram app and had a weak response to alarms raised by employees over how the platform is used in developing countries by human traffickers, the Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing a review of internal company documents.