Facebook Tells Employees To Save Communications: What You Need to Know

What Happened: Wednesday afternoon, yet another headline came up regarding Facebook Inc FB. The New York Times headline read: “Facebook tells employees to preserve all communications for legal reasons.”

Here’s what you need to know: 

• Facebook’s sent an email to employees Tuesday night requesting employees to save work communications going back to 2016
• The policy is known as a “legal hold,” this policy is often in place when a company is anticipating legal proceedings 
• These developments come after whistleblower Frances Haugen released thousands of documents to lawmakers showing that Facebook is aware of certain detrimental effects of its platform 
• Facebook’s stock was trading slightly higher for most of Wednesday afternoon, but dropped nearly 1% after The New York Times headline came out.

According to the New York Times, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed a legal hold was sent to employees on Tuesday night but declined to elaborate on what led to the policy. “Document preservation requests are part of the process of responding to legal inquiries,” she reportedly said.