The shares of Meta crept up slightly on the day after CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented new plans for the business’s move into the metaverse, but the stock is still roughly 31% lower than it was when the company released disappointing earnings at the start of the month. In a new interview with Yahoo Finance, whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Meta product manager who left the company last year, claims that the stock decrease is due to a more underlying reason: lies the company told about its products. She stated that the stock’s decline shows how the corporation’s misleading public assertions have harmed average investors.
“When Facebook lies about the company’s value; and when you lie about fundamental concerns, you’re lying about the company’s value,” she argues. “People are harmed.”
The “Facebook Files” were a series of exclusive reports based on a trove of documents from Haugen that revealed the company’s internal knowledge of issues as diverse as the effect of Instagram on the mental health of young girls, the prevalence of anti-vaccine misinformation in comments on Facebook posts, and the use of Facebook for the trafficking of vulnerable domestic workers. Haugen also accused the company of avoiding responsibilities by ignoring users’ and critics’ concerns.
“Facebook understands that no matter what activists say, they can simply deny it exists. Following the publication of the “Facebook Files” last fall, critics contacted me to say they had expressed similar concerns with Facebook. This is just anecdotal, [Meta] always tells me. However, the documents revealed that they were aware of the seriousness of the situation,” she said.
Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook in October, in reaction to the initial disclosures, that, “Safety, well-being, and mental health are all important to us. It’s frustrating to see media coverage that misrepresents our work and motivations. At its most fundamental level, I believe most of us are just unaware of the misleading picture of the company being created.”