This week, Facebook informed shareholders that it is facing “government investigations” as a result of whistleblower Frances Haugen’s leak of tens of thousands of pages of internal company documents.
“We became subject to government investigations and requests beginning in September 2021 relating to a former employee’s allegations and the release of internal company documents concerning, among other things, our algorithms, advertising and user metrics, and content enforcement practices, as well as misinformation and other undesirable activity on our platform, and user well-being,” the company said in its quarterly earnings filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The filing did not specify whether the government’s “investigations and requests” refer to previously unconfirmed probes from US federal agencies and foreign governments, or to known inquiries by the US Senate and UK Parliament.
Facebook has remained tight-lipped about the disclosure. In a statement to CNN Business, spokesperson Andy Stone said, “We are always ready to answer regulators’ questions and will continue to cooperate with government inquiries.”
Facebook employees received a “legal hold” on Tuesday night, telling them not to delete any internal documents or communications, according to Facebook spokesperson Genevieve Grdina.
“Document preservation requests are part of the process of responding to legal inquiries,” she said in a statement.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun “looking into” the whistleblower’s disclosures, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. The agency is reportedly investigating whether Facebook may have broken the terms of a $5 billion settlement reached with the agency in 2019 over the company’s data privacy practices.
Juliana Gruenwald of the FTC’s Office of Public Affairs declined to comment, adding, “FTC investigations are nonpublic so we generally do not comment on whether we are investigating a particular matter.”
The documents were provided by Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who left the company in May, as evidence to support at least eight SEC complaints alleging that Facebook (FB) misled investors and the public about internal issues. She also provided Congress with redacted versions of the documents. The leaked documents also served as the foundation for the Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series and, more recently, a slew of “Facebook Papers” reporting by a group of news organizations. CNN is one of the consortium’s members.
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it has opened an investigation into Haugen’s complaint and Friday’s disclosures from another anonymous former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower.
The documents provide the most in-depth look yet at many of Facebook’s most pressing issues and how they’ve been discussed internally — unprecedented insight into the nearly $890 billion company, whose apps are now used by more than 3.6 billion people around the world.
