Executives at the social media company have also put a hold on some work on existing products, the report said.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last week, Facebook said it was putting a hold on the kids’ version of its photo-sharing app Instagram, amid growing opposition from US lawmakers and advocacy groups citing safety concerns.

Facebook has come under fire in recent weeks after Frances Haugen, who worked as a product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook, revealed that she was the whistleblower who provided documents underpinning a recent Wall Street Journal investigation.

Adding to the troubles, it also experienced a six-hour outage on Monday due to a “faulty configuration change”, preventing its 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.

Facebook shares, which are mildly down in afternoon trading, have lost about 3% this week.