The scale of the document dump coming out of Facebook is such that it seems a little ungenerous to describe it as the action of a whistle-blower, given that the individual concerned has gone in with the equivalent of the full brass section of a decent-sized marching band. In a calamitous moment for what’s left of Facebook’s reputation, internal documents have been handed to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the US Congress and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), and the WSJ’s series on "the Facebook Files" makes for damning reading.
The leaker’s motivation may not be entirely altruistic, given that the SEC pays whistle-blowers between 10% and 30% of any fines awarded as a result of their information, and last October it paid one person a cheeky $114m award, so there may well be a chunky payment in the offing given that Facebook paid a $5bn fine over privacy violations two years ago...
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