Facebook is probably working on a ton of products behind the scenes, whether it be hardware or software or services. However, it seems that in the wake of an explosive whistleblower report, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) claims that Facebook has decided to hold back on its product development.Facebook isn’t stopping work completely, that wouldn’t make sense, but rather it seems that Facebook’s heads of departments will be analyzing the products that the company is developing to determine if it could further damage the company’s reputation, like whether or not it could draw further criticism and potential negative effects it might have on children.
A good example could be Instagram recently announcing that they would be pausing development on its Instagram for Kids platform, but this report suggests that other products could also be affected. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed to have alluded to this in a lengthy post.
According to Zuckerberg, “I believe that over the long term if we keep trying to do what’s right and delivering experiences that improve people’s lives, it will be better for our community and our business. I’ve asked leaders across the company to do deep dives on our work across many areas over the next few days so you can see everything that we’re doing to get there.”
Since we don’t really know what Facebook could be working on behind the scenes, it’s hard to determine how this could affect end users for now.