Facebook later explained these outage problems as “configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres”, which led to a failure of the network’s combined services. On the same day of the whistleblower interview, Facebook’s entire range of services, including its main site, WhatsApp and Instagram, all went down for around six hours. According to Haugen, Facebook did not reduce the exchanges that led to the insurrection on 6 January 2021.įacebook stock fell 4.8% immediately on the day after the Haugen interview amid concerns over its reputational damage, which was also exacerbated by the following six-hour outage of Facebook’s online services, which also included its related social media channels Instagram and WhatsApp. The greater the exchange between individuals, the longer people are on the site, which translates into more revenue for the social media platform.įacebook halted the algorithms that ignited interaction during the 2021 US presidential elections, but put it back immediately after the election was over.

Haugen, a former Facebook employee, testified that while she was working at the company, she had observed several conflicts of interest concerning what was suitable for the public and what was best for the company’s bottom line.Īccording to Haugen, Facebook uses algorithms to halt and ignite responses from users in order to create more interaction.

On 4 October 2021, American news programme 60 Minutes, part of the CBS broadcast television network, aired an interview with whistleblower Frances Haugen.

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