While such centralization “gives the company a unified view of users’ internet usage habits,” Netblocks said, it also makes the services vulnerable to single points of failure. London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks noted that the company’s plans to integrate the technology behind its platforms – announced in 2019 – had raised concerns about the risks of such a move.

The outage didn’t exactly bolster Facebook’s argument that its size and clout provide important benefits for the world. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that “social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.”

Facebook has tried to play down their impact. The Journal’s stories, called “The Facebook Files,” painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls’ mental health. Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. Haugen went public on CBS’s 60 Minutes program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions.

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