Former Facebook official Frances Haugen said - during a hearing before the US Senate Committee on Consumer Protection and Data Security - that Facebook is focused on making profits, which sometimes led to harm to people, and that the company hides things that may lead to harm, and operates in the shadows. And against the public good, as she put it.
She added that Facebook's products harm democracy and children, and stressed that the company knows that there are accounts for children under the age of 13 on its site, and that it reaps huge profits from advertisements in which children are used.
Members of the Committee on Consumer Protection and Data Security called Facebook's plans to target children and youth "frightening" and noted bipartisan concerns about Facebook's influence.
Haugen had said that internal research conducted by Facebook showed that dealing with Instagram content caused depression in teenage girls, considering that the platform's content harms teenagers.
Also in Washington, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed the administration's concern about the growing power of social media and its self-management system.
Psaki added that the information revealed by former Facebook official Francis Haugen showed the ineffectiveness of self-regulation adopted by social media platforms.
Saki pointed out that the efforts made by these companies to attract users, and their negative impact on the mental health of adolescents, is certainly troubling.
For years, US lawmakers have threatened to create regulatory frameworks for Facebook and other social networks to counter criticism that tech giants are ignoring privacy issues, providing ideal platforms for spreading misinformation and harming the well-being of young people.
More competition
In Russia, officials said that the disruption of Facebook on Monday highlights Russia's right to develop its platforms and sovereign social networks on the Internet, while the European Union stressed that this outage shows the need for more competing companies.
Russian social networks reported an increase in activity during the worldwide outage of Facebook on Monday.
For years, Russia has asserted greater dominance over its internet sector, pressured foreign tech companies to remove content and store data in Russia, and improved its ability to block platforms that break its rules.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said - during a Facebook outage that lasted about 6 hours on Monday evening - that what is happening "answers the question of whether we need our social networks and Internet platforms?"
VKontakta (VK), the largest home-grown Russian social network, had significantly more Facebook users in the country on Monday, and also announced an increase in messages and users during the Facebook shutdown.
Facebook attributed the malfunction that prevented its 3.5 billion users from accessing its services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger to an error in changing the settings.
The down detector, which tracks internet outages, described the failure as the biggest glitch ever faced by Facebook.
A large number of users switched to competing applications such as Twitter and Tik Tok on Monday.
A number of Facebook employees - who asked not to be named - told Reuters they believed the malfunction was caused by an internal error in how Internet traffic was routed to the company's systems.
Other alternatives
Meanwhile, European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday that Facebook's 6-hour outage yesterday shows the consequences of relying on a small number of large companies, and underscores the need for more competition.
Vestager wrote on Twitter that the incident showed the need for more competition.
Vestager last year proposed draft rules known as the Digital Markets Act, which set out a list of do's and don'ts for Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to force them to change their core business model to allow more competition.