Shares of Meta plunged nearly 24% on Thursday as the social media company severely missed quarterly earnings expectations amid criticism of bloated payrolls and distracted spending.

Revenues fell year-over-year from $29.0 billion to $27.7 billion, indicating a 4% decline, even as costs and expenses increased 19%, from $18.6 billion to $22.1 billion. Net income more than halved while earnings per share plummeted from $3.22 to $1.64.

“Our community continues to grow and I’m pleased with the strong engagement we’re seeing driven by progress on our discovery engine and products like Reels,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings report. “While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth. We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company.”

Meta shares plummeted to $98.99 on Thursday, marking the company’s lowest stock price since 2016. Shares have fallen 70.8% since the beginning of the year, significantly trailing the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the technology-heavy NASDAQ, which have dropped 12.2% and 31.7%, respectively.

Much of the new spending comes from Reality Labs, the arm of the company charged with developing technologies related to the metaverse, an immersive virtual reality that Zuckerberg and other executives forecast will serve as the next phase of digital communication. The group saw a $9.4 billion loss in the first three quarters of the year. Meta changed its name from Facebook last year to reflect the new direction.

“Conversely, our growth in cost of revenue is expected to accelerate, driven by infrastructure-related expenses and, to a lesser extent, Reality Labs hardware costs driven by the launch of our next generation of our consumer Quest headset later next year,” Meta said in the earnings report. “We do anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year. Beyond 2023, we expect to pace Reality Labs investments such that we can achieve our goal of growing overall company operating income in the long run.”

As the market reacted to the lowered earnings, Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock for the first time ever, according to a report from Bloomberg. Analysts expect that the company will see more poor results until “outsized investments” in metaverse technology begin to turn positive.

Altimeter Capital Management CEO Brad Gerstner had mentioned similar concerns in a recent letter to Zuckerberg about reversing the firm’s declining performance by reverting to core competencies. Rather than pouring between $10 billion and $15 billion into developing new metaverse technologies each year, Gerstner suggested slowing such expenditures to no more than $5 billion per year as investors focus on social media platforms and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, which Meta will be “well positioned to help invent and monetize.”

Gerstner also mentioned that Meta had more than tripled its workforce from 25,000 people to 85,000 people over the past four years. “It is a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley that companies ranging from Google to Meta to Twitter to Uber could achieve similar levels of revenue with far fewer people,” he remarked. “I would take it a step further and argue that these incredible companies would run even better and more efficiently without the layers and lethargy that comes with this extreme rate of employee expansion.”

FIRST ON FOX: A national sheriffs’ group is sounding the alarm over the record number of migrant deaths at the U.S. southern border, showing gruesome images of the migrants who have died attempting to enter the United States.

Fox News reported last week that there were 856 migrant deaths at the U.S. southern border in fiscal year 2022 – the highest and deadliest ever on record. So far, there have been 25 migrant deaths in FY 2023, which began on Oct. 1.

That is amid a surging migrant crisis that notched up more than 2.3 million migrant encounters in FY 2022, compared to the already-high 1.7 million in FY21.

Now, the National Sheriff’s Association (NSA), which represents sheriffs across the country in Washington D.C., is distributing a report "to illustrate the dire issues and challenges many Southwest Border Sheriffs face regarding migrant deaths on the border" as it pushes for solutions from lawmakers and the administration.

RECORD 856 MIGRANTS DIE AT SOUTHERN BORDER IN FY 2022: CBP

"The intent is to raise awareness that these deaths are preventable and enlist your community to press for change here in Washington," Executive Director and CEO Jonathan Thompson said in a letter to sheriffs.

The report includes dozens of graphic images of migrants who have been found dead along the border -- including those who have drowned, died from extreme heat or have been hit by trains. Included in the report is a graphic video of a migrant in extreme distress being aided by a smuggler.

"Transnational criminal organizations are taking advantage of migrants, recklessly endangering their lives and smuggling them for financial gain with no respect for human life," Thompson says.

At least one migrant is pictured with a wristband used by cartels and smugglers to track the migrants they are transporting into the U.S. The report highlights (but does not show) the death of multiple children, including a 23-month-old little girl who died in the Rio Grande this year.

The NSA says a policy of "encouraging asylum applicants" has to change and is creating a "human rights catastrophe." The report urges sheriffs to engage with citizens and push for change.

The group calls for greater federal-state-local partnerships and a reinstitution of border enforcement initiatives such as the "Remain in Mexico" policy -- a Trump-era program that kept migrants in Mexico while they awaited their hearings, but that has since been abolished by the Biden administration.

"The border crisis threatens our national security and has empowered the cartels to become the most powerful force along our southern border," Thompson says. "We need your help and the citizens of your community to contact President Biden and implore him to change our border posture and make it impermeable to the cartels and their human smuggling schemes."

The Biden administration has faced massive political pressure over the border crisis and has recently touted new efforts to tackle the crisis -- including new cooperation with Mexico that involves returning Venezuelans to Mexico under the Title 42 public health order.

While announcing more than 227,000 migrant encounters in September, administration officials said that arrivals from Venezuela had fallen "sharply" in the immediate weeks after the policy was implemented earlier this month.

Fox News' Griff Jenkins and Timothy Nerozzi contributed to this report.