I once lost R100 in an Uber, and I was devastated, writes Cape {town} Etc’s Lynn Cupido. I probably spent a good few hours bumming my friends out with the tale of how I lost said R100 and all the ways that I could’ve spent that money.
However, this is pocket change compared to the billions – yes, billions – that Mark Zuckerberg lost as a result of the massive outage that Facebook experienced on October, 4. The world seemed to go into a full-blown panic when the outage occurred, but I can only imagine that Zuckerberg must have been glitching at the thought of being knocked down a peg or two on the list of the world’s richest people due to Facebook’s “configuration changes.”
According to News24, Zuckerberg’s personal wealth fell by nearly $7 billion in only a few hours. It appears investors weren’t too thrilled about not being able to access their WhatsApp messages as the social media giant’s stock fell by 5% on Monday. However, let’s not feel too bad for Zuckerberg though, as the founder’s wealth is still sitting at $120.9 billion despite the drop, reports Forbes.
Along with this, a basic estimation by Save our Snopes indicated that Facebook may have lost a further $66 million in five hours due to a loss in ad revenue. Although this is merely an assumption, it looks the outage may have affected more than just the mental state of Instagram influencers on Monday.
Zuckerberg, and the rest of the world, may be blaming Mercury Retrograde, but this is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Facebook’s current problems. According to a series of stories published by the Wall Street Journal, Facebook allegedly knew about a series of problems pertaining to its products, including spreading misinformation related to the Capitol riots in January and Instagram’s effect on mental health.
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Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are back up after outage
Picture: Mark Zuckerberg Facebook