Facebook shares under pressure following release of leaked whistleblower documents

The Facebook Papers, a series of articles published by a consortium of 17 U.S. news outlets beginning on Friday, shed new light on the company’s thinking behind its actions leading up to the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 and its ability to fend of hate speech in languages outside of English.

Facebook shares were slightly negative in premarket trading Monday morning after the news outlets published their stories based on the leaked documents. The company is also scheduled to report quarterly earnings after markets close on Monday.

The documents were provided to the news outlets by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who took tens of thousands of pages of internal research with her before she left. She’s since provided those documents to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking whistleblower status.

“At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement in response to the flood of reporting. “Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie. The truth is we’ve invested $13 billion and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”

Here are some of the major themes the Facebook Papers have explored so far.