POLICY
POLICY
POLICY
Facing more government backlash, Facebook tells staff to preserve internal documents
As legal action against Facebook Inc. looks imminent, the company reportedly has told staff to preserve all internal documents and communications going back to 2016.
To say the company has come under some scrutiny of late would be a massive understatement. First, a series of leaks reported by The Wall Street Journal put a spotlight on the company, after which, the leaker, Frances Haugen, came out and did some more damage. This all culminated with the release of what is now called the Facebook Papers.
In an effort to fight back against the criticism, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has already made a number of comments seeming to suggest Facebook is being bullied and the criticism isn’t as stark as it looks. Today, someone at Facebook also sent a companywide email to address the issue of the scandal further.
“As you’re probably aware, we’re currently the focus of extensive media coverage based on a swatch of internal documents,” read the internal memo, obtained by The Washington Post. “As is often the case following this kind of reporting a number of inquiries from governments and legislative bodies have been launched into the company’s operations. To comply with these inquiries, we need to preserve documents and communications since 2016 — this is known as a ‘Legal Hold.’”
The email went on, saying that even discussions about various Facebook products on WhatsApp should be preserved, but not if they were chats about WhatsApp itself.
It was also reported today that Facebook is now being investigated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over whether it might have violated a $5 billion settlement it made with the FTC in 2019. The settlement was the biggest fine ever handed by the FTC over privacy issues, a consequence of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
As well as paying the fine, Facebook had pledged to implement more stringent data controls and also have more oversight. But after the recent leaks, it seems the FTC thinks the company might have breached the conditions that were set.
Photo: Greg Bulla/Unsplash
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