Mark Zuckerberg is currently counting losses after he lost billions of dollars to a global outage that hit his platforms, Facebook, Whastapp and Instagram.
The crash which lasted for 6 hours, leftover 2.6 billion customers locked out. That’s not all, it also left staff locked out.
Hours before the outage, a whistleblower came forward and revealed her identity which also likely contributed to the outage. In just a few hours, Zuckerberg’s personal wealth was reduced by over $6 billion.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, this has cost Zuckerberg the fifth position among billionaires. Now, he stands with $120.9 billion in sixth place, behind Bill Gates. Shares of Facebook plummeted about 5 percent, adding to a 15 percent drop since mid-September. The index also revealed that Zuckerberg is down from almost $140 billion in a matter of weeks.
His net worth began plummeting after Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of stories based on a cache of internal documents it obtained from a whistleblower, 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 January 6 Capitol riots, while downplaying the issues in public.
The reports have drawn the attention of government officials, and on Monday, October 3, the whistleblower revealed herself. Frances Haugen, 37, revealed her identity after she applied for federal whistleblower protection. Haugen had presented internal documents that went to Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and The Wall Street Journal.
She decided to reveal her identity and noted that Facebook realized 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.
Responding to the claims, Facebook has emphasized that the issues facing its products, including political polarization, are complex and not caused by technology alone.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, told CNN;
“I think it gives people comfort to assume that there must be a technological or a technical explanation for the issues of political polarisation in the United States.”