It has been a tough week for the social media giant Facebook—due to the revelation by Frances Haugen, former product manager of the company and then almost 6-hour long outage that prevented many users from accessing Facebook’s major platforms, such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Meanwhile, the company’s stock price fell about 5 per cent on 4 October, bringing its one-month loss to 15 per cent.

Additionally, in the case of other tech companies, Amazon fell over 3 per cent, followed by Apple, Microsoft and Google.

The drop in Facebook's stock price wiped off more than $6 billion of Mark Zuckerberg's wealth, while Jeff Bezos' fortune was wiped out by a drop in Amazon's stock price of $4.83 billion in a single day.

On Wall Street, technology stocks were under pressure as investors worried about rising inflation and interest rates.

While the Facebook-owned social media platforms ceased to function in most countries around the world, its stock price plummeted to a low of $322 per share. As reported, the stock price closed at $326 per share, a 4.89 per cent drop in a single day.

Facebook founder and CEO Zuckerberg's fortune has shrunk to $122 billion as a result of the stock market's decline. So far this year, he has added $18.1 billion to his fortune, moving him up to fifth place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Recently, the price of Facebook shares has been under pressure. The stock price has dropped 15 per cent since 7 September, falling from $382 per share to $326 per share.

The latest drop in Facebook’s share comes at a time when the former employee Haugen told the lawmakers in the United States at a hearing on Capitol Hill that the company-owned sites and apps "harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy". However, in a letter, the CEO said many of the assertions "don't make any sense," citing their efforts to combat dangerous content, increase openness and create an industry-leading research programme to underpin these issues.

Even though Zuckerberg did not take the name of the ex-employee, his key point is that both Haugen and the media have misinterpreted the research she disclosed. He claims that negative internal research has been cherry-picked and that positive findings have been overlooked.

What Happened To Others

Bezos’ Amazon, the technology and retail behemoth plummeted nearly 3 per cent, going negative year-to-date at one point during the trading on 4 October.

Amazon's stock closed at $3,189 per share, down 2.85 per cent. In 2021, the e-commerce giant’s stock price has been volatile. Amazon's stock is presently flat year-to-date, with a favourable tilt.

However, Bezos, one of the world's richest individuals, lost $4.38 billion as a result of the stock price drop. The business tycoon now has a net worth of $187 billion, trailing Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has a net worth of $210 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bezos' net worth has dropped more than $4 billion so far this year.

Apart from Facebook and Amazon, other FAANGM (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google/Alphabet, and Microsoft) equities were also down on 4 October.

Apple's stock price dropped 2.46 per cent to $139.14 per share. Tim Cook’s company stock has dropped 11.2 per cent in the last month.

The stock price of Netflix also fell 1.6 per cent to settle at $603 per share, while Alphabet, the parent firm of Google, was down 2.11 per cent at $2,673 per share, increasing losses in the last month to nearly 7 per cent. On 4 October, Microsoft's stock price also dropped 2.07 per cent, putting it in the negative.

Social media outage

Get Swarajya in your inbox.