Financial Daily Dose 10.5.2021 | Top Story: Facebook Beset by Whistleblower Revelations, Massive Outage

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A day after whistleblower Frances Haugen went public with many of the allegations she’s been lobbing at Facebook (so far only through the Wall Street Journal’s recent expose series), Zuck & Co. found themselves mired in one of the most significant outages ever to hit the company, with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all offline starting around noon eastern and stretching for hours - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Marketplace and TechCrunch

Of course, just because its website [temporarily] disappeared doesn’t mean that the rest of its problems have, so Facebook lawyers pressed on Monday with a motion to dismiss the FTC’s amended antitrust action against the company, arguing that “the agency’s complaint still lacked evidence that the company had violated antitrust laws” - NYTimes and Bloomberg and Law360

The OPEC+ nations have decided to play it slow in increasing production output despite rising demand and per-barrel prices hitting some of their highest prices—both in the U.S. and internationally—in years - WSJ and NYTimes

NHiTSA delivered some welcome news for Elon and Teslaheads on Monday, formally declining to open an official probe into “fire risk in Tesla vehicles with fully charged batteries after finding no relevant incidents in the United States in the last two years” - NYTimes and TechCrunch

Not as good for the e-car giant? Try the $137 million award a jury has ordered Tesla to pay Owen Diaz, “a Black former employee who accused the carmaker of ignoring racial abuse he faced while working there” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360

At least one key Ozy investor—SV Angel’s Ron Conway—pushed back hard on Monday to Carlos Watson’s attempted media redemption blitz, calling on Watson to take care of his 75 employees rather than focusing on company advertisers and investors - NYTimes

Hulu’s president, Kelly Campbell, has reportedly resigned in favor of a senior role at NBCUniversal. Campbell had been with Hulu for 4 years and spent the past almost-two years at the helm of the streaming service - WSJ

Chip shortages cost Ford nearly 30% in Q3 sales—a drop “in line” with much of the rest of the auto industry, “which has been hampered by a global shortage of computer chips” - NYTimes

Meanwhile, in Sweden, the Geeley-owned Volvo Cars has announced that it’s moving forward with an IPO that could value the safety-conscious auto mainstay at upwards of $25 billion and help Volvo fund “efforts to transform its fleet into a fully electric one” - WSJ

And you thought we’d let those new Space Force unis go by unmentioned. Tsk tsk - NYTimes

Stay safe, and get vaxxed,

MDR

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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