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Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor of communication at Cornell University, told ABC News that \"there are sprawling categories of workers whose livelihoods depend on the full functioning of these platforms,\" including social media creators and small business owners.

Duffy added that the \"abruptness\" of the outage \"highlights the staggering level of precarity that structures our increasingly digitally-mediated work economy.\"

According to Facebook, businesses were not charged for ads during Monday's downtime. Ads \"did not deliver during the time the systems were offline, and advertisers were not and will not be billed for ads during the outage,\" the company said in a blog post.

What does this have to do with the whistleblower hearing or FTC lawsuit?

Monday's outage just happened to occur as the company has been in headlines for separate woes -- including the Tuesday whistleblower hearing and the FTC legal saga.

Frances Haugen, an ex-Facebook employee, testified before a Senate subcommittee in Tuesday in the wake of internal research being leaked by her to the press and lawmakers that indicates Facebook was aware of its potential negative impact on the mental well-being of its young users. Haugen told lawmakers on Tuesday about internal evidence she reportedly has showing that the company -- and Zuckerberg -- intentionally ignored proof of its potentially harmful impact on users. Facebook has publicly refuted Haugen's claims, and has said the Journal reporting mischaracterizes what it is trying to do.

Zuckerberg also spoke out against what he called \"the false picture of the company that is being painted\" amidst the hearing.

\"We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health,\" he said in his note to employees Tuesday. \"It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives.\"

Meanwhile, as the outage was happening, Facebook on Monday filed a new motion to dismiss the FTC's latest antitrust complaint against it. While the outage happened independent of the suit, lawmakers such as Ocasio-Cortez have pointed to the fallout from the outage as evidence of alleged monopoly power wielded by Facebook.

\"PHOTO:
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
PHOTO: Frances Haugen, former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, arrives to testify before Senate at hearing to examine Facebook's practices, on Capitol Hill on Oct. 5, 2021 in Washington, D.C.
>

Facebook denied the allegations of anticompetitive practices in a statement Monday.

\"The FTC's fictional market ignores the competitive reality: Facebook competes vigorously with TikTok, iMessage, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and countless others to help people share, connect, communicate or simply be entertained,\" the company said. \"The FTC cannot credibly claim Facebook has monopoly power because no such power exists.\"

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