Recode Daily: Mark Zuckerberg is ‘dead serious’ about Russian election meddling — and ready to spend on Facebook’s security

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself didn’t testify on Capitol Hill yesterday — like Twitter and Google, Facebook sent its top lawyer — but he said he’s “dead serious” about Russia’s election meddling on the site, and that Facebook is “investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability.” Some members of Congress want Facebook to inform individual U.S. users — millions of them — that they saw Russian propaganda on the site during the 2016 presidential campaign. [Tony Romm / Recode]

Among the intriguing facts that emerged from two days of testimony: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton spent a combined $81 million on Facebook ads during last year’s campaign — considerably more than Russia-controlled accounts that spent about $100,000 on 3,000 Facebook ads intended to spread disinformation. Yesterday’s House Intelligence hearing surfaced more examples of the Russia-backed ads that appeared on Facebook and Instagram, which targeted users based on their interests in Christianity, Rush Limbaugh and the war in Afghanistan. [Kurt Wagner / Recode]

Facebook’s Russia problems didn’t stop it from generating an astonishing $4.7 billion in profit — 79 percent higher than a year ago. The social network now has 1.37 billion daily users, and average revenue generated per daily user is the highest it’s ever been, at $7.54. Apple serves up its Q4 earnings later today, on the eve of the retail debut of its flagship iPhone X. [Kurt Wagner / Recode]

Tesla posted a record quarterly loss of $619 million, and blamed it on battery-manufacturing issues. During yesterday’s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that Tesla fired 700 people last month — 2 percent of the company’s 33,000 employees — for performance issues. [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]

The New York Times is on track to hit $579 million in digital revenue this year — and possibly $900 million by 2020. [Edmund Lee and Rani Molla / Recode]

Amazon has created an Augmented Reality tool you might actually use. AR View is a feature in its iOS shopping app that shows customers a 3-D rendering of how a product will look in their home or workspace before they order it. Ikea, Wayfair and Houzz have all launched AR shopping features, but none of them sport the U.S.’s most popular shopping app for iOS like Amazon does. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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