Meta’s decisions can degrade public discourse, instill social unrest, and undermine efforts to create an informed public, reducing the intrinsic value of the economy, which is directly correlated with the long-term performance of diversified portfolios. In our complex economy, decisions by a single company can have profound effects on almost every other company an investor owns. But when Meta threatens the public interest to drive up its own value, it can compromise the long-term value of the economy that supports these portfolios.
Most individual and institutional investors, including pension plans and endowments, are not concentrated in a single stock. While Haugen’s testimony highlighted the conflict between Facebook’s financial success and the public interest, a similar, but largely hidden, conflict exists between the company’s executives and most of its shareholders: While Meta’s antisocial actions might buoy its stock price and create wealth for senior leaders, the socially destructive nature of these activities is a threat to the diversified portfolios of its own shareholders. In coming forward, the whistleblower believed what she was doing “was right and necessary for the common good.” In the ensuing firestorm, the Menlo Park, California-based social media company changed its name to Meta Platforms and Sandberg announced she was stepping down from the company. She provided Congress and the press with a trove of internal documents showing how Facebook and its senior leadership, including CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, knew of the damage their product was doing. “The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people.” Facebook consistently resolved those conflicts in favor of its own profits,” Haugen told Congress in 2021. “I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. As she would later testify before Congress, however, she found that she had joined a company that persistently put profit before the broader social good. She wanted to help make the social media platform less toxic. Frances Haugen chose to join Facebook after a family member became radicalized online.
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