With respect I am pretty sure that the most recent and widespread Facebook-related news story is this one.
Holistically I agree that this isn't the kind of distraction Facebook wants, although it tickles me to imagine Mark in the datacenter going Rambo with a pair of wire cutters.
I am seeing 0 news about the whistleblower when I google Facebook. Only outage news.
The whistleblower is kinda silly
If FB could increase revenue by having a "safer" algorithm then of course they would. Every company is just trying to increase revenue..
Unless another disgruntled employee knew it would amplify the story.
1 article about the whistleblower and 2 about the outage. Both about the outage also mention the whistleblower, so you could say that's 100% of coverage at least mentions the whistleblower.
Also 1 out of 3 tweets also mentions the whistleblower.
Strongly disagree. The outage has millions of people entering "Facebook" into their search engines. Most engines will conveniently put related news at the top of the search results page. The most recent and widespread Facebook-related news story is about the whistleblower.
Plus everyone has a lot of spare time to read the article now that Facebook and Instagram are down.
The outage didn't bury the story. It amplified it. Any suggestions that Facebook did this on purpose don't even make sense.