Facebook reports strong Q4 earnings despite year of troubles

The fourth quarter revenue of the U.S. social media giant Facebook beat Wall Street's expectations with a strong year-on-year growth of 30 percent, the company said on Wednesday.

Despite a tumultuous year of data breach, privacy policy disputes and heavy scrutiny from federal regulator and lawmakers, Facebook said it has earned 16.91 billion U.S. dollars in the final three months of 2018.