Mark Zuckerberg lost $6 billion during Facebook outage: Details here
Late last night, Facebook and its subsidiary services, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, suffered a worldwide outage that lasted nearly six hours. The outage not only caused Facebook's share price to drop by 5% but also took a toll on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's net worth. A whopping $6 billion was shaved off the billionaire's worth in a matter of hours. Here are the details.
Bloomberg reported that Facebook stocks were down nearly 5% on Monday. Moreover, this was a 15% drop compared to mid-September numbers. The stock price has also dented Zuckerberg's net worth that fell to $121.6 billion on the same day. The $6 billion hit was enough to make him slip down one place to fifth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zuckerberg's $121.6 billion net worth is outdone by Microsoft founder Bill Gates who ranked fourth on the list with a $124 billion net worth, just because Facebook was down for around six hours. Facebook's official explanation for the outage is vaguely indicative of DNS issues that wiped paths to its data centers, making all its services inaccessible.
We believe Facebook's share price drop and its impact on Zuckerberg's net worth can also be tied to a whistleblower who went on television to expose Facebook's selfishness. The whistleblower—Frances Haugen—claimed Facebook repeatedly chose its profits over user wellbeing. The company also dissolved the Civic Integrity Group after the 2020 Presidential Election, allowing people to coordinate the January 6 Capitol Hill riots on Facebook.
The whistleblower added the platform is also aware of Instagram's negative impact on the mental health of teenagers. A Congressional hearing has been assembled to address this. That said, Facebook's ambiguity leaves unanswered questions pertaining to the cause of the worldwide outage. Nonetheless, the outage and the whistleblower's deposition were both parties to triggering Zuckerberg's loss.
