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 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 off hate speech in languages outside of English.

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

Jan. 6

The documents revealed frustration among Facebook's ranks about the company's ability to get the spread of content that potentially incites violence under control.

"Haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?" an employee wrote on an internal message board during the riot outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to The Associated Press. "We've been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn't be surprised it's now out of control."

Facebook had put additional emergency measures in place ahead of the 2020 election to stem the spread of violent or dangerous content if needed. But as many as 22 of those measures were set aside after the election and before Jan. 6, internal documents reviewed by AP showed.

A Facebook spokesperson told the outlet its use of those measures followed signals from its own platform and law enforcement.