Facebook employees buy burner phones ‘to talk s–t’ with each other

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• Facebook employees have been using burner phones so they’re able to “talk s–t” about the company with their colleagues, BuzzFeed News reports.
• BuzzFeed’s story details an atmosphere of distrust and tension within Facebook, which has faced many scandals over the last two years. 
• Also on Wednesday, the British Parliament released a trove of internal Facebook documents, detailing the company’s thinking around partnerships and competition.

Amid a disastrous year for Facebook filled with information leaks and damaging revelations, employees inside the company have started buying disposible burner phones “to talk sh–t about the company” with each other, a former senior employee tells BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed News reports growing unrest within Facebook that has employees “contemplating their futures” with the company. Employees told BuzzFeed that Facebook’s scandal-ridden year has led to a hostile internal atmosphere that has split employees: one side, loyal to Facebook’s traditional leadership, and another group that is preparing for “a larger corporate meltdown.”

That same senior Facebook employee tells BuzzFeed that there’s “a growing sense of paranoia,” with the burner phones a symptom of the culture. 

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. A Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that this is a “challenging time,” and that “we are more determined than ever to continue making progress on the issues we’ve faced.”

Read the full BuzzFeed News report here.

Read more: Facebook plummets down list of best companies to work for after catastrophic year

The scandals plaguing Facebook have come at a steady clip: User data was misappropriated for political ads, leading to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. User data was stolen by hackers. Users have been deleting their accounts. Leadership was linked to efforts to link anti-Facebook rhetoric to George Soros, playing into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. People are calling on Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to resign from their leadership positions.

BuzzFeed’s report came on the same day as other, major revelations about the company  — the British Parliament made public a load of secret documents detailing the social network’s relationships with third-party companies and their access to data.