Facebook’s ad sales machine roars on

“We had a good start to 2017.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook said it’s closing in on 2 billion users as it topped Wall Street estimates for first-quarter revenue, sending a strong signal that marketers are continuing to plunk down more ad dollars despite growing concerns over the spread of fake news and violent, graphic videos on the platform.

Revenue soared 49% to $8.03 billion, easily coasting past analyst consensus of $7.83 billion.

“We had a good start to 2017,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

The social media company reported net income of $3.06 billion, or $1.04 a share, up from $1.73 billion, or 60 cents a share, a year ago.

Facebook no longer reports earnings on an adjusted basis, meaning stock-based compensation is included.

Facebook added 80 million users in the first quarter, giving the service a total of 1.94 billion who frequent it at least once a month and a big boost in its ambitions to soak up billions more users around the globe.

Two-thirds of Facebook’s monthly active users visit Facebook every day, the company said. The number of people who visited Facebook every day was 1.28 billion, up 18% year over year.

Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research, told USA TODAY in February that Facebook was on track to hit 2 billion users this year, a major milestone no other Internet company has reached.

At this rate of growth, Facebook will surpass 2 billion users by late June, Dawson predicted Wednesday.

That kind of global growth should translate into growth in ad sales. But Facebook’s plans to stop increasing the number of ads shown to users in their news feeds in mid-2017 has concerned investors, who are eager to hear how it will make up for the slowdown in revenue growth.

Shares fell about 2.4% in afterhours trading following remarks from David Wehner reiterating that advertising revenue growth will continue to decline in 2017. Facebook announced first-quarter earnings after the market closed Wednesday.

Wehner also warned investors to expect rising expenses and infrastructure costs.

Compounding those concerns: Whether consumers will be turned off by fake news or the graphic content showing up in its Facebook Live streaming service. Facebook has taken steps to root out misleading articles on the service.

Zuckerberg pledged earlier Wednesday to hire 3,000 additional content reviewers to more quickly remove inappropriate material.