From Facebook to Volkswagen and Samsung: why national stereotypes matter during

corporate crises
How do national stereotypes influence
offending companies
Facebook is currently experiencing the perfect storm. On October 4 (2021), the company’s
services experienced an outage that lasted six hours during which a technical error prevented
2.9 billion users from accessing Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
The estimated loss to the global economy was estimated at almost US$ 1 billion, or the US$
150 million per hour.
At the same time/simultaneously, another crisis has been gaining momentum. On October 1,
the Wall Street Journal published “The Facebook Files”, a collection of leaked documents that
provide rare insight into the inner workings of the organization and the findings of its internal
research.
The documents suggest that Facebook is aware of the ill effects its services have, but does
little to fix them. Facebook’s own internal research found that Instagram harms teens’ mental
health and contributes to eating disorders and suicidal thoughts. On October 5, just one day
after the global outage, Frances Haugen, the whistle-blower behind the leaked documents,
appeared before U.S. congress and stated that Facebook prioritises growth over safety.