Facebook Inc. employees repeatedly chafed at what they viewed as anti-competitive or unethical practices by the company, internal chats show. But their concerns, voiced in 2012 and 2013, were overruled by senior managers including Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who argued that the survival of the social network was more important.
The messages come from a roughly 7,000-page trove of leaked documents that were part of a years-old lawsuit in San Mateo County, California. The interactions are likely to be scrutinized further as Facebook faces ongoing antitrust investigations.
In multiple discussions found in the documents, employees, including some top executives, argued against policies that would cut off competitors' ability to advertise on the platform and access Facebook's audience and user information, which it provided to noncompeting companies.