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Facebook’s had a rough few weeks. And it’s only likely to get worse for the trillion-dollar company over the next couple of days.
The social media company will report third-quarter earnings Monday after the market closes, and it has already warned that changes to Apple’s privacy settings is impacting its ads business, hurting sales. Apple allowed iOS users to disable tracking apps in April. To generate advertising revenue, Facebook and many other Big Tech companies relied on such user data.
In addition to Facebook’s previous red flares, Snap on Thursday narrowly missed expectations around its revenue—by no more than $3 million—and cited Apple as a core problem. Snap investors panicked and shares plunged almost 30%, prompting a fall in Facebook and other tech stocks. Analysts expect Facebook to bring in $29.6billion in sales and $3.2billion in profit for the third quarter.
The company is now in the midst of a growing scandal that is worse than any in years. Earlier this month, whistle-blower Frances Haugen went public with Congressional testimony and leaked internal documents showing Facebook struggle to contain misinformation and other harmful content on its apps—despite extensive research from its employees about the problems.
The Wall Street Journal published the first reports using Haugen’s documents. The documents have been made available to a select group of news organizations. These outlets published additional reports over weekend. Those stories documented Facebook’s role in the Jan. 6 riots and decision to wade into foreign markets like India with perilous consequences, among other things.
Facebook responded to the crisis by launching an aggressive public-relations campaign in discrediting Haugen and the documents that were the focus of media coverage. According to reports, the company is looking to distance itself further from the past by changing their name, possibly to align with a new focus in augmented-and virtual-reality technology. The rechristening could come during Facebook’s Connect conference on Thursday, a summit devoted to those VR plans.
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