The outage didn't exactly bolster Facebook's argument that its size and clout provide important benefits for the world.

Nick Clegg, the company's vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that 'social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.' Facebook has tried to play down their impact.

The Journal's stories, called 'The Facebook Files,' painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls' mental health. Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook's own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. Haugen went public on CBS's '60 Minutes' program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. Eastern Monday.įacebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company's awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions. The company apologized and said it is working to understand more about the cause, which began around 11:40 a.m.

Facebook said late Monday that 'the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change' and that there is 'no evidence that user data was compromised as a result' of the outage.

Facebook instagram and whatsapp outage