Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has stoked a feud between Donald Trump and Brussels after warning an EU crackdown on its advertising business risks hurting sales this year.
The billionaire’s social media empire, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, warned that new EU restrictions on its advertising business would harm users in Europe and have a “significant impact” on revenues.
The warning, included in its first quarter results on Wednesday night, is significant because it comes after Mr Trump’s administration accused Brussels of using its digital rules as a form of “economic extortion” on American companies .
The EU has ruled that Meta must offer European internet users the ability to opt out of its current personalised advertising and tracking, allowing them to choose less personalised adverts, which are less lucrative.
Meta said: “We expect we will need to make some modifications to our model, which could result in a materially worse user experience for European users and a significant impact to our European business and revenue as early as the third quarter of 2025.”
Meta has said it will appeal the EU ruling.
The attack comes after Mr Zuckerberg has sought to foster closer ties with the White House, having once banned Mr Trump from Facebook.
He has overhauled Facebook’s moderation policies to focus on free expression, unwinding its fact-checking programme and many of its hate speech policies in the process to appease the Republican.
He has held multiple meetings at the White House so far this year and has allied himself with the president against the EU, which has imposed tough new digital regulations on the technology sector.
Like Mr Trump, Meta has begun to liken these rules and their potential fines to a form of tariff. Last week, the EU also issued a €200m (£169m) fine against Meta over alleged breaches of its technology laws.
Despite the EU warning, the company’s revenues rose 16pc to $42.3bn (£31.7bn) and net profits jumped 35pc to $16.6bn, both well ahead of market forecasts.
The results come as the stock market braces for the impact of Mr Trump’s tariffs. Meta’s business risked a potential hit from the impact on its major advertisers, which include Chinese e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu.
The social media giant is also exposed to shrinking advertising budgets from major brands, which could pull back from spending in the face of a potential recession.
However, Meta’s shares rose 6.1pc in after hours trading as it revealed resilient results in the face of the market turmoil.
Ahead of its results, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled a suite of new artificial intelligence (AI) powered products , including a standalone chatbot app that he hopes can challenge OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Mr Zuckerberg earlier this week claimed Meta had close to one billion users of its AI products as it seeks to leverage its social media users to dominate the industry.
He has also pledged to spend $65bn on AI infrastructure as technology companies pursue so-called Artificial General Intelligence, which Mr Zuckerberg believes will do the work of thousands of highly skilled engineers.
The need to maintain close ties with the White House was laid bare this week after US officials accused Amazon founder Jeff Bezos of a “hostile and political” decision to add tariff costs to some of its products. Amazon denied this was ever its plan.
Separately, Microsoft on Wednesday night revealed a 13pc increase in revenues to $70bn and an 18pc increase in net income $28.5bn, well ahead of analyst expectations. Its stock climbed 7pc in after market trading.
The Windows and Office giant has launched a wave of AI products under its Copilot brand and has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI.