Facebook's week of scandals has made it easier than ever to argue for its downfall - here's why the whistleblower still thinks it shouldn't be broken up

• Facebook's chaotic outage Monday revealed its outsize grip on users around the world.
• The next day, a former employee testified to US lawmakers after leaking internal documents.
• The whistleblower, Frances Haugen, said breaking up Facebook wouldn't address her concerns.

The past two days have provided nothing but encouragement for Facebook critics.

On Monday, the tech giant's vast network went dark as all Facebook-owned apps including Instagram and WhatsApp went down for over five hours.

People around the world struggled to communicate with family members, small businesses suffered, and activists paused vital evacuation efforts. It was an unusual display of the world's interdependence - with Facebook at the center.

In response, Facebook highlighted how many businesses relied on its platform, a fact politicians have repeatedly used in antitrust arguments against the company. On the same day, Facebook asked a district court to dismiss an antitrust complaint by the Federal Trade Commission.

"There are serious consequences when you put so much of the content on the internet in the hands of a single company," Morgan Wright, the chief security advisor of Sentinel One, told Insider.

"Expect antitrust proceedings to use this as fodder for breaking up Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram into separate companies," he added.

Zuckerberg's week took another turn for the worse Tuesday, as Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, testified to US lawmakers after leaking a trove of internal documents.

Her testimony shed new light on Facebook, including its engagement-based algorithms and its internal findings about Instagram's role in amplifying teenage eating disorders.

"Yesterday we saw Facebook get taken off the internet," Haugen said during her opening statement. "I don't know why it went down, but I know that for more than five hours, Facebook wasn't used to deepened divides, destabilize democracies, and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies."

After over an hour of testimony, a senator asked Haugen whether breaking up the tech giant would help solve any of its issues.

"I'm actually against the breaking up of Facebook," Haugen answered. "Right now Facebook is the internet for lots of the world."

"If you split Facebook and Instagram apart," she added, "it's likely that most advertising dollars will go to Instagram.

"Facebook will continue to be this Frankenstein that is altering and endangering lives around the world. Only now there won't be money to fund it."

Haugen said lawmakers should instead focus on regulatory oversight "because these systems are going to continue to exist and be dangerous even if broken up."

Funneling Facebook's ad revenue into Instagram could exacerbate another concern Haugen emphasized Tuesday: that essential groups outside Facebook's growth teams are understaffed.

"Facebook's consistent understaffing of the counterespionage, information operations, and counterterrorism teams is a national security issue," she said. "I have strong national security concerns about how Facebook operates today."

Facebook's director of policy communications released a statement questioning Haugen's credibility on the subjects about which she was testifying, adding that Facebook didn't agree with her characterization of issues.

Facebook, however, said that "despite all this," it supported regulating the internet and that "it is time for Congress to act." Facebook has previously said it supports creating rules for online platforms.