Mark Zuckerberg Loses $7 Billion in One Day as Facebook Stock Plummets
Huge sell-off during massive outages see CEO's net worth plummet
© press
As Facebook and its related apps went down during unprecedented global outages on Monday, owner and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's net worth plummeted as shareholders dumped their stock.
Zuckerberg lost a staggering $7 billion from his personal wealth as the stock for his company plummeted during the blackout that affected Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Some of the world's most popular social media platforms went down for several hours at about 11 a.m. ET Monday.
The outage inspired an onslaught of mockery on Twitter.
"Everyone is just sort of standing around," one Facebook staffer told NBC News.
Facebook did not say how many users were affected, but the applications serve billions of users worldwide.
© press
According to reporting by Bloomberg’s Scott Carpenter, Zuckerberg’s net worth took a massive $7 billion hit due to a stock selloff.
He’s down 5 percent to $120.9 billion, so maybe don’t shed too many tears.
Zuckerberg’s net worth is down nearly $20 billion from a high of $140 billion just a few weeks ago, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The decline in Zuckerberg’s net worth moved Bill Gates up to the fourth spot.
The outage took a toll on Facebook's stock, which fell from $335.50 a share at the opening bell to $326.23 a share at the close of the day.
The Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outages come on the heels of the explosive leaks for a former top employee.
In a "60 Minutes" episode, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen revealed herself as the whistleblower who released thousands of pages of private Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal and federal government detailing how its platforms amplify hate, misinformation, and public unrest.
© press
As Neon Nettle first reported, Haugen exposed a huge alleged conspiracy by the social media giant to divide society "for profit" by manipulating the information flow on the platform.
Haugen accused Facebook of prioritizing its own interests over the public good to further assert its power grip over society and boost profits.
"There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook," she revealed in the interview.
"And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money," Haugen explained.
"The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world," Haugen told 60 Minutes Sunday.
Rather conveniently, all reporting of Haugen's massively damaging revelations about Facebook were drowned out in the news cycle by reports of the outages.
