Meta to Lay Off 10,000 More Employees, Mark Zuckerberg Says

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Brian Mariotti, CEO of Funko, posted a message to fans of Mondo, the high-end collectibles company it acquired last year, after Mondo was hit with layoffs. As part of Funko’s 10% job cuts across the company, Mondo co-founders Mitch Putnam and Rob Jones as well as senior creative director Eric Garza were laid off last week. In a Twitter post Thursday, Mariotti confirmed that there were layoffs at Mondo but said “the majority of the companywide layoffs weren’t in Mondo.” He also wrote that contrary to early reports last week that Mondo was shutting down the posters division, “the Mondo posters business will continue, period.” That said, according to Mariotti, “We feel that making extremely limited runs of posters, most of which are 150 pieces or under, limits access to fans unfairly. Many of these posters are bought with the sole purpose of flipping them at a much higher cost to fans that really want them.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Roku is handing out pink slips again and exiting some office space as the streaming platform company takes additional steps to rein in costs. The company said Thursday it will lay off about 200 employees, or 6% of the company’s remaining workforce. In addition, Roku said, it will exit and sublease (or discontinue use of) some office facilities that the company does not currently occupy. Roku disclosed the cutbacks in an SEC filing. Roku’s latest job cuts come after the company in November 2022 announced that it was eliminating 200 jobs in the U.S., citing “current economic conditions.”

Heidi Chung Note: This article is based on Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “2023 Media & Tech Trend Tracker,” available exclusively to subscribers. With the rate of growth in digital advertising declining, some market entrants big and small in the social media space are feeling the competitive threat of Meta now more than ever.  After registering as the most popular app download worldwide in 2022, TikTok maintained that title in the first quarter of 2023, racking up more than 186 million downloads, according to data.ai.  

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is set for many, many sleepless nights after he and wife Priscilla Chan welcomed their third child into the world.The genius behind Facebook, who was played by Jesse Eisenberg in David Fincher's acclaimed pseudo-biopic The Social Network, announced his heartwarming news via Instagram on Friday with pictures of both parents enjoying their adorable little one. "Welcome to the world, Aurelia Chan Zuckerberg! You're such a little blessing," the 38 year old wrote.

Mark Zuckerberg has a new baby at home.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are new parents for the third time over.

Girl gang! Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are proud girl parents to their three daughters.

Mark Zuckerberg has a new blessing in his life: another baby girl!On Friday, the Facebook co-founder announced his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to their third daughter. «Welcome to the world, Aurelia Chan Zuckerberg! You're such a little blessing,» he captioned photos of them with the newborn on Instagram. The news comes after the couple announced in September 2022 that Priscilla was expecting.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After a strategic review, Amazon intends to lay off 9,000 more employees — on top of the 18,000 job cuts it previously announced, CEO Andy Jassy announced Monday. The latest round of cuts will mostly affect employees in Amazon Web Services (AWS), People, Experience and Technology (PXT), advertising and Twitch divisions, according to Jassy. The company’s senior management team expects to make final decisions on which jobs will be eliminated by “mid to late April,” the CEO said. “This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” Jassy wrote.

Amazon is laying off another 9,000 workers as job cuts in the tech sector expand at a time of growing economic uncertainty. It follows cuts last fall and early this year.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After more than two years, YouTube has lifted its suspension on Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former U.S. president who was booted from major internet platforms in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. “Starting today, the Donald J. Trump channel is no longer restricted and can upload new content,” YouTube said in a statement Friday. “We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.” YouTube added that Trump’s “channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.” The channel currently has 2.64 million subscribers. The most recent videos uploaded to it (on Jan. 12, 2021) are clips from the far-right OANN (One America News Network) coverage a Trump press conference on the border wall in Texas.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATED: Reddit was suffering an hours-long issue on Tuesday that made the popular discussion site inaccessible for many users — and the company didn’t have an ETA on when it will be resolved. In an update at 2:43 p.m. PT, Reddit’s status page said, “We’ve identified a fix which may take some time to implement, in the meantime ready your bananas (or eat them!).” User reports of problems accessing Reddit’s website and apps spiked around noon PT on Tuesday, topping more than 60,000 outage reports, according to monitoring site Downdetector. The Reddit status page, at 12:18 p.m. PT, posted, “Investigating – Reddit is currently offline. We’re working to identify the issue” and subsequently said the problems stemmed from an “internal systems issue.”

Meta – the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – will cut another 10,000 jobs and undergo a hiring freeze in what CEO Mark Zuckerberg is calling the ‘Year of Efficiency’ for the tech giant.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Sarah Rosen, who left Twitter last year shortly after Elon Musk’s takeover over the social network, has joined Reddit as senior director of content partnerships. At Twitter, Rosen most recently was head of North America content partnerships, leading all efforts in the region across entertainment, news and sports. After eight and a half years at Twitter, Rosen quit in November, less than a month after Musk closed the $44 billion acquisition. In her new role at Reddit, Rosen will oversee the content partnerships team focused on media, sports, gaming and entertainment verticals. According to Reddit, in the last year, the content partnerships team has expanded collaborations with organizations including the NFL (for the Super Bowl), Netflix (for “Stranger Things”), Lionsgate (“John Wick 4”), HBO (“The House of the Dragon”), Amazon’s Prime Video (“The Lord of the Rights: The Rings of Power”) and the Washington Post.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In the wake of the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Wrapbook, a company that provides payroll services for TV and film productions, said payments submitted through its platform will be subject to delays. In messages to clients Friday, Wrapbook said payroll-processing delays caused by the failure of SVB — which came after a historic run on the bank’s deposits — may continue into next week. The shutdown of SVB “will cause payroll to be delayed today, March 10th 2023, and impact the processing of uncashed checks,” Wrapbook said in a statement. The company said it is working to resume payroll processing with SVB while at the same time seeking to process payroll payments with another banking partner.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor About one-fourth of Roku’s cash and equivalents — nearly half a billion dollars — has been held in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was shut down by financial regulators Friday after it collapsed. And the streaming platform company said it’s unsure the extent to which it will be able to recover that cash. SVB, after it faced a run on deposits and failed to raise capital to make up the shortfall, was closed by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which appointed the FDIC as receiver of its assets. Roku disclosed in an SEC filing that about $487 million of its $1.9 billion in cash and equivalents is held at SVB, or about 26% of the company’s cash and cash equivalents balance as of March 10. The remaining $1.4 billion is “distributed across multiple large financial institutions,” Roku said in the filing.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, said it is considering launching a new Twitter-like social network. “We’re exploring a standalone, decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. The rep said the company had no additional info on the prospective social network to share. News site Moneycontrol first reported on the potential Meta service, which is code-named “P92.” The new Meta app would be based on — and interoperable with — the framework that powers Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that launched in 2016 and has seen a surge in popularity since Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Alex Jones, the Infowars far-right conspiracy figure who has been ordered to pay a staggering $1.5 billion to families of Sandy Hook victims over his lies about the deadly massacre, would receive a $520,000 yearly salary under a proposed bankruptcy plan his company submitted this week. Jones’ Free Speech Systems, which is the parent company of online outlet Infowars, filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan Tuesday with a bankruptcy court in Texas. Under the proposal, which requires court approval, Jones’ company expects it would have $7 million to $10 million per year after expenses to pay creditors, including the Sandy Hook families.

Bloomberg, will come on top of the 11,000 workers who lost their jobs in November, which were the first major layoffs at the social media company, whose history dates to 2004. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post at the time that the cuts were “some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history.”Bloomberg noted the new cuts will come on top of efforts to downsize its management.The new layoffs are being driven by financial targets and come at a time when many tech companies are in the midst of widespread retrenching following huge expansions during the pandemic.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In a wide-ranging restructuring, SiriusXM is eliminating 475 jobs — or about 8% of its headcount — with CEO Jennifer Witz citing economic uncertainty and a need to operate with “greater agility and efficiency.” The satellite radio and audio streaming company is the latest media company to pare back its headcount. Nearly every department across SiriusXM will be affected by the layoffs, Witz wrote in a memo to staff Monday announcing the cuts, which the company disclosed in an SEC filing. “The investments we are making in the business this year, coupled with today’s uncertain economic environment, require us to think differently about how our organization is structured,” Witz wrote. The “decision to reduce our workforce was required in order for us to maintain a sustainably profitable company.”