The tech giant said Project Waterworth – connecting the US, India, South Africa, Brazil and other regions – will be the world’s longest underwater cable project when completed.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has sought to extend its presence in technology beyond social media, including in artificial intelligence (AI) and the infrastructure that supports it.

It said its new cable project would provide “industry-leading connectivity” to five major continents and help support its AI projects.

“This project will enable greater economic co-operation, facilitate digital inclusion, and open opportunities for technological development in these regions,” Meta said in a blog post.

The cable would be the longest to date that uses a 24 fibre-pair system, giving it a higher capacity, according to the firm.

Sub-sea cables have become increasingly important as they provide the means to power a variety of digital services and transfer data worldwide at speed.

One regularly-cited statistic suggests more than 95% of the world’s internet traffic is transferred through undersea cables.

Telecommunications market research firm TeleGeography says there are currently more than 600 publicly-known sub-sea cable systems worldwide.

This includes the 2Africa cable, backed by Meta and mobile network operators such as Orange, Vodafone and China Mobile, which links three continents and spans 45,000km.

Tech’s bigger stake

Tech firms that serve as major providers of web services have invested huge sums in cable infrastructure.

Google said in 2024 it would build the first sub-sea cable connecting Africa and Australia, and announced a $1bn investment to boost connectivity to Japan with two new sub-sea cables in the Pacific Ocean.

“Over the past decade there has been a shift in which these cables are increasingly laid by large technology companies,” Professor Vili Lehdonvirta of the Oxford Internet Institute told the BBC.

He said this is in contrast to the past, where underwater cables were laid and financed by large groups of national telecoms firms, due to their considerable investment needs.

Prof Lehdonvirta said this reflects the growing size and position of big tech firms to be able to fund such infrastructure independently – something that “may be significant to policy makers concerned with concentration in digital markets”.

Telecoms and technology industry analyst Paolo Pescatore said it spoke to Meta’s ambitions.

“Meta has shown a strong desire to own more of the connectivity slice,” he told the BBC.

“This is a further demonstration as it seeks to leapfrog rivals in providing users with an unique experience by tightly integrating hardware, software, platform and its growing aspirations in connectivity,” he added.

Protecting against threats

The rising importance of sub-sea cables has increased concerns over their vulnerability to attacks or accidents.

Following a spate of severed cables, experts have said undersea communications infrastructure is a growing arena for geopolitical tensions and conflict.

Nato launched a mission in January to increase surveillance of ships in the Baltic Sea after damage to critical undersea cables last year.

A UK parliamentary committee recently issued a call for evidence about the UK’s resilience in the face of potential disruption.

This said pointed to growing concern over “Russian and Chinese capabilities to hold undersea infrastructure at risk – particularly during periods of heightened tension or conflict”.

Meta said in its blog post announcing Project Waterworth it would lay its cable system up to 7,000 meters deep and “use enhanced burial techniques in high-risk fault areas, such as shallow waters near the coast, to avoid damage from ship anchors and other hazards”.

Prof Lehdonvirta said the project appeared to diverge from more established routes, such as by skipping Europe and China and avoiding “geopolitical hotspots” in the Suez canal and South China sea.

And he said connecting the US with major, contested markets in the Southern hemisphere could be viewed as “bolstering US economic and infrastructural power abroad”.

Trump sued the social media giant and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots that year.

In July 2024, Meta lifted the final restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the lead up to US presidential elections.

The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Around $22m of the settlement will go to a fund for Trump’s presidential library.

The balance will be used to cover legal costs and the other plaintiffs who signed on to the lawsuit. Meta will not admit wrongdoing.

The company suspended Trump’s accounts in 2021 and said that it would ban him from the platforms for at least two years.

After Trump’s election victory in November, Mr Zuckerberg visited his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. The move was seen as evidence of an apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.

The following month, Meta donated $1m to an inauguration fund for Trump. Mr Zuckerberg was a guest at Trump’s inauguration at the US Capitol earlier this month – seated near other global tech billionaires.

For years, Trump had been highly critical of Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook – calling the platform “anti-Trump” in 2017.

Their relationship soured further after the president’s accounts were banned. He called Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March 2024.

Twitter, which is now named X and owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, also “permanently” suspended the president from its platform.

After buying the firm for $44bn, Mr Musk reinstated Trump’s account in 2022 after a poll he ran on the site narrowly backed the move.

Separately on Wednesday, Meta defended its $65bn investment in artificial intelligence (AI) after tech stocks were rocked in the wake of Chinese AI app DeepSeek’s sudden rise.

Mr Zuckerberg told investors there was a lot to learn from DeepSeek, but it was too soon to have “a really strong opinion” about what the app means for the future of AI.

“If anything, I think the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is right thing for us to be focused on,” he added.

Many US tech stocks sank this week after DeepSeek surged in popularity, though Meta’s has bucked this trend by rising.

The stock was up in after hours trading after it posted better than expected financial results on Wednesday.

However, questions remain about what advances in Chinese AI will mean for the US AI market generally considering DeepSeek’s claim it was developed at a fraction of the cost of its US rivals.

Mr Zuckerberg said in a call to investors following the results on Wednesday that DeepSeek’s rise strengthened his conviction in his company’s embrace of “open-source” AI.

Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, took a different tack from many US companies by releasing an open source AI model for free.

Mr Zuckerberg on Wednesday said he thought that approach was important to keeping the US at the cutting edge, as countries around the world compete to become the key players in the still-emerging industry.

“There’s going to be an open source standard globally and I think for our own national advantage it’s important that it’s an American standard,” he said.

“We take that seriously. We want to build the AI system that people around the world are using.”

Meta last week announced it was planning to spend as much as $65bn this year to expand its AI infrastructure.

Mr Zuckerberg on Wednesday acknowledged ongoing debate about how best to direct AI investments, but told investors that for his firm, which serves billions of people globally, big investments made sense.

“I would bet the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage – for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale we want to,” he said.

He said it would also be a critical year for the company in other areas, saying he this year would be key to determining whether sales of the company’s smart glasses will take off as hoped.

Mr Zuckerberg has said he expects all glasses to be replaced by smart glasses within a decade, a prediction he repeated on Wednesday.

He also spoke of plans to revive the “cultural relevance” of Facebook, the social media sight that launched his fortune but which has fallen out of favour compared to other offerings such as Instagram and tikTok.

Mr Zuckerberg also defended his recently announced decision to end fact-checking, saying he thought plans for community notes would be more effective.

He said the company had seen no hit to advertiser demand as a result of its change.

It reported more than $48bn in revenue in the last three months of 2024, up 21% from the same period the prior year.

Though AI spending has weighed on the company, it still reported quarterly profit of more than $20bn, up 49% from a year ago.

Some users of the platforms had complained following Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday that they had “automatically” been made to follow the new president, as well as Vice-President JD Vance and First Lady Melania Trump.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone explained that the accounts were managed by the White House, which had updated them to reflect the new position holders.

“This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition,” he wrote in a statement.

The accounts carry the handles Potus – which stands for “president of the United States” – as well as VicePresident and Flotus, an acronym for the first lady.

Archived versions of the pages show the Potus and Flotus accounts previously carried the name and official portrait of Joe Biden and Jill Biden, respectively.

Mr Stone added that it “may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands”.

Trump became US president for the second time on Monday and quickly set about issuing a range of executive orders and directives asserting his political agenda – ranging from withdrawing from the World Health Organisation to declaring a national emergency at the border with Mexico.

His inauguration was attended by some of the most influential tech billionaires, including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and X chief Elon Musk, who also has an advisory role in the new administration.

Trump has previously been heavily critical of Meta, which banned him in 2021 for what it described as his “praise for people engaged in violence” during the 6 January riots at the US Capitol.

The president and his allies also accused the firm of co-operating with the Biden administration to supress reports concerning allegations about Biden’s son, Hunter, and some content surrounding the Covid pandemic. Mr Zuckerberg said he regretted the decision.

In August, Trump wrote in a book that Mr Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he attempted to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

Since Trump’s election win in early November, though, Mr Zuckerberg appears to have curried favour with him, dining with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence at the end of the month and donating $1m (£786,000) towards his inauguration a few weeks later.

Meta also said earlier this month that it would end third-party fact-checking in favour of an approach similar to X’s community notes, in an apparent attempt to address some of Trump’s prior criticisms.

The company said this marked a return to its “fundamental commitment to free expression”.

In a memo to staff, boss Mark Zuckerberg said he had made the decision to speed up the firm’s regular performance-based cuts in anticipation of an “intense year”.

He said the company would “backfill” the roles later in 2025.

The company, which employs about 72,000 people globally, did not say how the cuts would be distributed around the world.

Workers in the US who are affected will know by 10 February, according to Mr Zuckerberg’s memo. Those outside the US will be informed “later”.

“This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams,” he wrote.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster.”

The move comes on the heels of other big decisions by Mr Zuckerberg, including moves to end the company’s fact-checking and diversity programmes.

Performance-based job cuts are common in corporate America. At Meta, they would normally unfold over the course of a year, Mr Zuckerberg said, but the process is being accelerated this year.

Facebook and Instagram get rid of fact checkers

Roughly 3,600 people could be affected this move. They will receive “generous severance”, he said.

The last big cuts at Meta came in 2023, when the company cut about 10,000 positions in a cost-cutting drive after Mr Zuckerberg declared it the “year of efficiency”. It cut about 11,000 roles in 2022.

Mr Zuckerberg also appears to be overhauling his own public image.

On a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, Mr Zuckerberg said he thought companies needed more “masculine energy” and discussed taking up martial arts, which he said he enjoyed because he felt he could more fully express himself, than in his corporate role.

“When you’re running a company, people typically don’t wanna see you being like this ruthless person who’s just like I’m gonna crush the people I’m competing with,” he said. “But when you’re fighting, it’s like no.”

“I think in some ways when people see me competing in the sport they’re like oh no, ‘That’s the real Mark.”

The move comes just days after Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it was ending a fact-checking programme criticised by President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans.

In a memo to staff about its decision, which affects, hiring, supplier and training efforts, Meta cited a “shifting legal and policy landscape”.

Walmart and McDonalds are among the other companies to have made similar decisions regarding diversity efforts since Trump won re-election.

In its memo to staff, which was first reported by Axios and confirmed by the BBC, Meta – the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – cited a Supreme Court ruling concerning race in college admissions, while also noting that the term “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) had become “charged”.

The tech giant said it would continue to look for diverse staff, but end its current approach, which seeks to make selections from a pool of diverse candidates.

In a December memo to employees, Amazon said it was “winding down outdated programs and materials” related to representation and inclusion, aiming to complete the process by the end of 2024.

“Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” Candi Castleberry, Amazon’s VP of inclusive experiences and technology, wrote in the note which was first reported by Bloomberg on Friday.

Financial firms JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, also pulled out of groups focused on risks from climate change this week.

The moves are a sign of the acceleration of a retreat that started two years ago, as Republicans ramped up attacks on firms such as BlackRock and Disney, accusing them of “woke” progressive activism and threatening political punishment.

Big brands such as Bud Light and Target also faced backlash and boycotts related to their efforts to appeal to LGBTQ customers.

Many of the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives were put in place after the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in 2020 following George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police.

Recent court decisions have bolstered critics of the programmes, who said that they were discriminatory.

The Supreme Court in 2023 struck down the right for private universities to consider race in admissions decisions.

Another court of appeals ruling invalidated a Nasdaq policy that would have required companies listed on that stock exchange to have at least one woman, racial minority or LGBTQ person on their board or explain why not.

Meta said it was also ending its efforts to work with suppliers who are “diverse” but will instead focus on small and medium-sized companies.

It also plans to stop offering “equity and inclusion” training and instead offer programmes that “mitigate bias for all, no matter your background”.

Meta declined to comment on the memo, news of which was immediately met with both criticism and celebration.

“I’m sitting back and enjoying every second of this,” said conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has taken credit for successfully campaigning against the policies at companies such as Ford, John Deere and Harley-Davidson.

LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign said workplace inclusion policies help to attract and retain top staff and had been “directly tied to long-term business growth”.

“Those who abandon these commitments are shirking their responsibility to their employees, consumers, and shareholders” RaShawn “Shawnie” Hawkins, the senior director of the HRC Foundation’s Workplace Equality Program said.

Meta’s move comes just days after the tech giant said it was ending a fact-checking programme criticised by Trump and Republicans.

In a nearly three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said he had always been concerned about being the arbiter of “truth” and was “ill-prepared” when the issue first heated up after the 2016 election.

He said the demands to take down information became unreasonable under the Biden administration. For example, he said the company faced pressure during the pandemic to remove content like statements about vaccine side effects.

That helped to generate a wider political backlash, he said, including his own.

“I feel like I have much greater command now of what I think the policies should be,” he said, adding that he felt the US government “should be defending its companies … not be the tip of the spear attacking”.

“When the US does that to its tech industry, it’s basically just open season around the rest of the world,” he added.

It comes as Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, appears to be making efforts to mend ties with Trump, ahead of the US president-elect’s inauguration this month.

Days ago former UK deputy prime minister and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg left his job as president of global affairs at the social media giant.

The other new members of Meta’s board include John Elkann, who leads European investment firm Exor, and Charlie Songhurst, a former Microsoft executive.

“Dana, John and Charlie will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with [artificial intelligence], wearables and the future of human connection,” said Mr Zuckerberg in a statement.

The social media giant also praised Mr White’s role in turning UFC into a global business.

In a post on Meta’s Instagram, Mr White said he loves social media and is “excited to be a small part of the future of [artificial intelligence] and emerging technologies.”

Mr White has previously rejected any suggestion that UFC platforms hate speech, insisting he supports free speech.

A year ago his tense exchange with a reporter who questioned why he allowed fighters to make anti-LGBT remarks went viral.

“People can say whatever they want and they can believe whatever they want,” Mr White retorted.The UFC boss has had a close relationship with Trump for decades.

Mr White’s appointment follows news that Sir Nick was being replaced at Meta by his deputy, prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, who has handled relations between the social media firm and the Republican Party.

There has been an apparent thawing between Meta and Trump in recent months.

Relations had been frosty at least since Trump was barred from Facebook and Instagram following the US Capitol riot in January 2021.

In August, Trump wrote in a book that Mr Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he attempted to interfere in the 2024 US election.

But the president-elect later softened his position, telling a podcast in October it was “nice” that Mr Zuckerberg was “staying out of the election”, and thanking him for a personal phone call after he faced an assassination attempt.

Mr Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago and had dinner with Trump after his electoral victory in November. Earlier this month, he donated $1m (£800,000) to the president-elect’s inauguration fund.

In a video posted alongside a blog post by the company on Tuesday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression”.

Joel Kaplan, who is replacing Sir Nick Clegg as Meta’s head of global affairs, wrote that the company’s reliance on independent moderators was “well-intentioned” but had too often resulted in the censoring of users.

However, campaigners against hate speech online have reacted with dismay – and suggested the change is really motivated by getting on the right side of Donald Trump.

“Zuckerberg’s announcement is a blatant attempt to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration – with harmful implications”, said Ava Lee, from Global Witness, a campaign group which describes itself as seeking to hold big tech to account.

“Claiming to avoid “censorship” is a political move to avoid taking responsibility for hate and disinformation that platforms encourage and facilitate”, she added.

Emulating XMeta’s current fact checking programme, introduced in 2016, refers posts that appear to be false or misleading to independent organisations to assess their credibility.

Posts flagged as inaccurate can have labels attached to them offering viewers more information, and be moved lower in users’ feeds.

That will now be replaced “in the US first” by community notes.

Meta says it has “no immediate plans” to get rid of its third-party fact checkers in the UK or the EU.

The new community notes system has been copied from X, which introduced it after being bought and renamed by Elon Musk.

It involves people of different viewpoints agreeing on notes which add context or clarifications to controversial posts.

“This is cool,” he said of Meta’s adoption of a similar mechanism.

However the UK’s Molly Rose Foundation described the announcement as a “major concern for safety online.”

“We are urgently clarifying the scope of these measures, including whether this will apply to suicide, self-harm and depressive content”, its chairman Ian Russell said.

“These moves could have dire consequences for many children and young adults.

“Fact-checking organisation Full Fact – which participates in Facebook’s program for verifying posts in Europe – said it “refutes allegations of bias” made against its profession.

The body’s chief executive, Chris Morris, described the change as a “disappointing and a backwards step that risks a chilling effect around the world.”‘

Meta’s blog post said it would also “undo the mission creep” of rules and policies -highlighting removal of restrictions on subjects including “immigration, gender and gender identity” – saying these have stemmed political discussion and debate.

“It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms”, it said.

The changes come as technology firms and their executives prepare for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.

Trump has previously been a vocal critic of Meta and its approach to content moderation, calling Facebook “an enemy of the people” in March 2024.

But relations between the two men have since improved – Mr Zuckerberg dined at Trump’s Florida estate in Mar-a-Lago in November. Meta has also donated $1m to an inauguration fund for Trump.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritising free speech,” said Mr Zuckerberg in Tuesday’s video.

Mr Kaplan replacing Sir Nick Clegg – a former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister – as the company’s president of global affairs has also been interpreted as a signal of the firm’s shifting approach to moderation and its changing political priorities.

Kate Klonick, associate professor of law at St John’s University Law School, said the changes reflected a trend “that has seemed inevitable over the last few years, especially since Musk’s takeover of X”.

“The private governance of speech on these platforms has increasingly become a point of politics,” she told BBC News.

Where companies have previously faced pressure to build trust and safety mechanisms to deal with issues like harassment, hate speech, and disinformation, a “radical swing back in the opposite direction” is now underway, she added.

The tech giant’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, having sought to repair his and his firm’s relationship with Trump following the election.

Trump has previously been highly critical of Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook – calling the platform “anti-Trump” in 2017.

Meta is not believed to have made similar donations to President Joe Biden’s inaugural fund in 2020 or to Trump’s previous inaugural fund in 2016.

The company confirmed its million-dollar donation to the inaugural fund to several outlets on Wednesday.

Inauguration funds are used to pay for events and activities when a new president takes office – some consider them an attempt to curry favour with a new administration.

The donation was confirmed by CBS on Wednesday, and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January.

Relations between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg have historically been far less cordial.

They particularly soured when Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president’s accounts in 2021, after they said he praised those engaged in violence at the Capitol on 6 January.

Since then, Trump has waged a war of words against Meta – calling Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March.

He said a law that would see TikTok banned in the US unless sold off by its parent company ByteDance would unfairly benefit Facebook.

In August, Mr Zuckerberg told Republican lawmakers in a letter that he regretted bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” some Facebook and Instagram content during the coronavirus pandemic.Trump wrote in a book published in September that Mr Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tried to intervene in the 2024 election.

But the president-elect appears to have since softened his position.

He told a podcast in October it was “nice” Mr Zuckerberg was “staying out of the election”, and thanked him for a personal phone call after he faced an assassination attempt.

Still, Mr Zuckerberg remains far less close to Trump than fellow tech titan Elon Musk.

The Tesla and X owner has been dubbed Trump’s “First Buddy” because of his extensive donations to his election campaign.

That has led to Mr Musk being placed in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

There has been no such rapprochement between Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg – although the cage fight between them that was once mooted now appears to be off.