Facebook Shares Plunge After Whistleblower Controversy

Shares of Facebook (FB) took a hit in early Monday trading after a whistleblower revealed the social-media giant uses its platform to spread hate, violence and misinformation.

Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, 34, said on the CBS Sunday night news program "60 Minutes" that the site gives polarizing, hateful content more reach and does little to stop its spread. In response to this controversial reveal, shares of the Facebook had dropped about 5.5% by 1:50 p.m. ET.

"There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money," Haugen said.

Earlier this year, Haugen released thousands of pages of internal research and documents, some of which reported that Facebook only addressed about 5% of its hateful content.

"I've seen a bunch of social networks, and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I've seen before," Haugen said. "At some point in 2021, I realized I'm going to have to do this in a systematic way, that I'm going to have to get out enough [documents] that no one can question that this is real."

Facebook pushed back, telling CNN that “to suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true."

"Every day our teams have to balance protecting the ability of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place," Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said in a statement to CNN following Haugen’s interview.

The controversy has also caused backlash on social media.

Users of the social platform and its photo sharing app Instagram have taken it to Twitter with the hashtag #DeleteFacebook, which is now trending in the U.S.

Later on Monday, Facebook and its apps Instagram and WhatsApp stopped working completely. Though there are no direct correlations between the apps’ malfunction and Facebook’s scandal, the social media collapse is a simple reminder of the tech giant’s impact as thousands of users share their frustrations and memes using the hashtag #instagramdown, #facebookdown and #whatsappdown on Twitter.