Facebook is owned by Meta Platforms, Inc., the company Mark Zuckerberg renamed from Facebook, Inc. in October 2021.
3 min read
Facebook is owned by Meta Platforms, Inc., a publicly traded company that Mark Zuckerberg co-founded in 2004 and still controls as chief executive and largest shareholder. The company changed its name from Facebook, Inc. to Meta in October 2021 to signal a broader focus beyond the original social network.
Ownership and control are two different things at Meta. Thousands of institutional and individual investors hold Meta stock, but Mark Zuckerberg keeps effective control through a dual class share structure. His Class B shares carry ten votes each, while ordinary Class A shares carry one vote. This means Zuckerberg can be outvoted on paper by other shareholders yet still hold the majority of voting power, so major decisions, from product direction to acquisitions, ultimately need his approval.
Meta is the parent company behind several products people use every day. Understanding the family helps explain why actions in one app can affect another, such as a shared login or a linked ad account.
Many users still search for “who owns Facebook” because the app itself never changed its name, only the parent company did. That distinction trips people up in a few common ways:
| What people think | What is actually true |
|---|---|
| Facebook the app is now called Meta | The app is still called Facebook; only the parent company is Meta |
| Meta is a new, separate company | Meta is the same legal entity as Facebook, Inc., just renamed |
| Instagram and WhatsApp became independent | They remain fully owned Meta products |
Confusion about company ownership is different from confusion about who runs a specific Page. If you want to know who manages a business Page you are looking at:
This tells you who administers the Page day to day, which has nothing to do with Meta’s corporate ownership.
Because Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp together, advertising, privacy settings and account security are increasingly managed from one place, the Meta Business Suite or Business Manager. If you run ads or manage a page, expect policy changes, ad targeting rules and data practices to be decided at the Meta level, not separately per app. Keeping this in mind helps when troubleshooting account issues, since a restriction on your Meta Business account can affect Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp access at the same time.
