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If that were not enough, this weekend marks the first anniversary of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that shocked society – an anniversary that Facebook would almost certainly like the world to forget.
All the problems that torment Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for a year now have collided at the same time: regulatory control, struggle to maintain order on its platform and growing exodus of leaders in a wake of scandals without background.
"It's a nightmarish week for Zuckerberg and Facebook," said Daniel Ives, an analyst who follows Facebook for Wedbush. "Technology investors are becoming more and more nervous" because "more turbulence may be coming".
Shares of Facebook dropped 4% early Friday before bouncing back somewhat. Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
Facebook started the year on a positive note. In January, the company announced a record profit for the last three months of 2018, which clearly shows that its public relations crises have not hurt its profitability. During a conference call with analysts to discuss the results, Zuckerberg launched a confident note. "We started to turn a corner," he said.
Now, it looks like Facebook has taken a turn and entered another wall.
While Facebook is struggling to overcome the data privacy crises that have plagued the past year, politicians and regulators continue to monitor the company closely. Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating Facebook's data sharing agreements with a number of large technology companies. The Federal Trade Commission would be in talks with Facebook over a possible record fine. And European officials seem to examine every movement in society.
Perhaps in order to show the world that society is truly reformed, Zuckerberg wrote a long post on his blog this month about his plan to reposition Facebook as a "privacy-focused" platform. To achieve this, Zuckerberg said that Facebook would focus on private, encrypted and ephemeral conversations through its products.
Yet these changes can only contribute to the turbulence of the Facebook bench. Chris Cox, director of Facebook products and longtime right hand man of Zuckerberg, has announced his intention to leave the company on Thursday. Both he and Zuckerberg alluded to the need for enthusiastic "leaders" about the new strategy.
Facebook also announced that Chris Daniels, head of WhatsApp, was leaving the company. In recent months, the company has lost its security officer, its chief policy and communications officer, Instagram founders and CEO of WhatsApp.
These headlines, Ives said, show that Facebook continues to wrestle with Cambridge Analytica's "driving effect".
Following the scandal, Zuckerberg and other leaders repeatedly told politicians, investors and the press that Facebook was hiring thousands of additional content moderators and building artificial intelligence systems to protect the platform of propaganda, hate speech and violent videos.
But the limits of this double approach were apparent Friday during a massacre in a mosque in New Zealand. One of the shooters seems to have broadcast the attack on Facebook for nearly 17 minutes. Facebook said that he had "promptly deleted" it, but only after being alerted by the New Zealand police. Copies of the video continued to appear on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
The news has again sparked criticism that Facebook and other social media companies were not doing enough to suppress this type of content. At the very least, it is a stark reminder of what Zuckerberg said in the past: protecting Facebook is an "endless battle".
If this week is an indication, putting order in the Facebook home could also prove to be an endless battle.
Sherisse Pham contributed to this report.
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