Monday, October 4, 2021, saw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp experience downtime for several hours, with users finding it difficult to access their data or communicate with other parties.
This development had a much more negative effect on Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook Inc., as his personal wealth suffered a $7 billion loss, thereby sending him to fifth place on the world’s billionaire index.
Also, a revelation by a whistleblower was partly responsible for the drastic reduction in the fortune of the 37-year-old American.
A report by Yahoo Finance stated that a sell-off caused the social media giant’s stock to lose 4.9% on Monday, which is an addition to a drop of about 15% since mid-September.
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WHAT THIS MEANS:
- Zuckerberg’s worth went down to $121.6 billion from almost $140 billion. This puts him at number 5, below Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates.
- A series of stories, based on a cache of internal documents, revealing 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 Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
- The US Government has waded into the whistleblower’s claim on how Facebook platforms harm and misinform members of the public.
Meanwhile, data scientist, Frances Haugen, a former employee in Facebook’s civic integrity unit, in an explosive 60 Minutes interview that aired in the United States, on Sunday, revealed that she was the source of the internal documents and research showing the company knew of the harmful effects caused by its platforms.
The company’s own findings, according to According Deutsche Welle (DW), a German public state-owned international broadcaster, include knowledge of the harms Instagram caused teenage girls’ body image perceptions and a two-tier system of penalties for misuse of its platforms; one for celebrities and the other for the public.
