(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own)

SAN FRANCISCO  - The biggest threat to Facebook may actually be itself. Everything was thrown at the $800 billion social network in the last year, from an advertising boycott to antitrust lawsuits. Mark Zuckerberg’s business still posted a 33% jump in fourth-quarter revenue from a year earlier. Regulatory pressure is rising, but the greatest danger for Facebook may be getting distracted.

The ad boycott campaign didn't achieve that. Nor, so far, has the legal attack. Nearly every U.S. state attorney general sued the company, along with the Federal Trade Commission, and the top line still beat analyst estimates for the year, increasing by 22% to $86 billion. Monthly active users for the company's family of products grew by 14% to 3.3 billion people as of the end of December. Operating margins improved, too.

And Zuckerberg's social network kept adding features that attract users and advertisers. During the pandemic, Instagram launched its e-commerce service, Shops, and recently added Reels, a copycat of viral video app TikTok. WhatsApp has started trying to make money from its platform and now offers disappearing messages like Snapchat.

Though it will probably take years for antitrust trials to get underway, there will be court battles over documents and fights over questioning executives like Zuckerberg. EU regulators are also cracking down, while German authorities recently launched a competition probe into Facebook’s Oculus virtual-reality headsets.

Then there is Congress. The storming of the Capitol building earlier this month and Facebook’s indefinite ban of former President Donald Trump may finally push lawmakers to force online platforms to take more responsibility for user-generated content. That could increase costs for Facebook and similar social sites, and it could turn off some users.

Other tech companies are sniping, too. Apple plans to make it harder for Facebook to track users of its devices for ad targeting, for example.

Yet users have stuck by Facebook. It’s expected to gain ground on Alphabet’s Google in the global digital ad market, with a 24.4% share this year compared to the latter’s 29.5%, according to estimates from eMarketer. So far Zuckerberg has kept his focus. Essentially ignoring all the blowback may not make him popular. So far, though, it has paid off for the business.

CONTEXT NEWS

- Facebook on Jan. 27 reported revenue of $28.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, a 33% increase from a year earlier, and $86 billion for the entire year, up 22%. Analysts expected revenue of $26.4 billion for the quarter and $84.1 billion for the year, according to Refinitiv.

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own)

(Editing by Richard Beales and Amanda Gomez) ((gina.chon@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: gina.chon.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))