Mark Zuckerberg has seen his net worth plummet by billions in a matter of hours after a global outage of Facebook services and ongoing scrutiny of the company from US lawmakers sent its stock plummeting.
Facebook stock closed down 4.9% on Monday in New York after the company suffered a service outage that left WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and other products offline for hours. Service was restored at 3.30am on Tuesday and the company blamed a “faulty configuration change” for the incident.
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The outage spooked investors who sold off Facebook’s stock. The company’s net worth have fallen by 13% since Wall Street Journal published the first article in its mutli-part investigation, dubbed the Facebook Files.
The article revealed that Facebook knew about a wide range of problems with its products such as Instagram’s harm to teenage girls’ mental health and misinformation about the January 6 Capitol riots, while downplaying the issues in public.
Zuckerberg’s net worth currently stands at $121.6 billion, according to Bloomberg. It has fallen from $142 billion in August. Facebook’s stock – the source of Zuckberg’s wealth – has come under sustained pressure in recent weeks after a whistleblower leaked damning internal documents to Wall Street Journal.
The documents cover internal research conducted by the company about its impact on the world. The most damning finding is that Instagram can have a negative affect on the self-esteem and body confidence of teen girls.
Frances Haugen, 37, revealed her identity after she applied for federal whistleblower protection. Haugen had presented internal documents that went to US Congress, US Securities and Exchange Commission, and The Wall Street Journal.
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The whistleblower is due to testify before US Senate today at 3pm UK time for hearings called in the wake of the leaks. Facebook’s stock come under further selling pressure during her testimony.
Haugen, who unmasked herself, appeared on the US news programme, 60 Minutes on Sunday. She told the programme;
There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.
She decided to reveal her identity and noted that Facebook realised that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, and will click on fewer ads, making less money.
It was Haugen who presented papers and information on Instagram being harmful to teenager’s mental health that has led to the platform pausing Instagram Kids.
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Responding to the claims, Facebook has emphasised that the issues facing its products, including political polarisation are complex and not caused by technology alone.
