SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s worst year ever was its best year ever when it came to its business.

After a string of scandals in 2018 damaged its reputation and raised questions about its handling of people’s data, the social network said Wednesday that it had gained new users around the world in the fourth quarter and reported a record profit. Facebook also posted its full results for 2018, which showed its total revenue and profit reaching record levels.

The results suggested that advertisers had continued to spend money on the site and that users were not deterred by Facebook’s issues, which include the spreading of disinformation and election meddling. The company had said last year that it expected its growth to slow as it spent to improve the privacy and security of its users.



“One of the biggest questions people have about Facebook is whether we can make the massive investments we’re making to monitor and protect the platform while we keep growing our business,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said in an interview on Wednesday. “This quarter shows we can do both.”

Yet even as its growth continued, Facebook began de-emphasizing its core social network and started highlighting its family of apps, which include Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Facebook said it would eventually stop sharing user numbers for each individual service and instead provide one combined figure for all of its apps.