Zuckerberg’s net worth drops $9 billion as Facebook share price plunges

The Facebook outage this morning was pretty inconvenient for tens of millions of users. But for Mark Zuckerberg, it was catastrophic.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has dropped down in his position on the global rich list following six hours of a global outage affecting his websites.

Around 2:45am AEDT, tens of millions of users discovered that a global outage was affecting Facebook and its sister sites Instagram and WhatsApp, which were unable to open.

The company has had to resort to putting out a tweet warning users of the problem.

Just before 9am AEDT, the issue was restored — so it lasted more than six hours.

This is the most severe outage on record to affect Facebook Inc.

And it’s hitting Zuckerberg — and the rest of the world — where it hurts: our wallets.

Panicked stock holders started selling off stock in a mass sell-off, causing shared to plummet by five per cent, creating a loss of US$7 billion (A$9.6 billion) for Zuckerberg.

He’s now dropped below Bill Gates to number five on the rich list, his net worth at US$120.9 billion (A$164 billion) compared to mid-September when he was at US$140 billion (A$192 billion), according to the Bloomberg Index.

We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lost a tonne of money in the last six hours Picture: AFP PHOTO / Ludovic Marin

It’s not just Zuckerberg taking a pummelling.

Internet watchdog Netblocks has calculated a “rough estimate” that the global economy is losing US$160 million (A$219 million) because of lost revenue behind Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

Since the issue went for more six hours, that means the world economy has lost more than A$1.3 billion so far.

💸 With Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger down for over one hour and counting, the Cost of Shutdown Tool (COST) calculates a rough estimate of ~$160m in losses to the global economy.https://t.co/dCoqDqgcecpic.twitter.com/jcxZvTLEKC

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) October 4, 2021

People trying to access Facebook found the message: “Something went wrong. We‘re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can” on their screen.

Instagram users who tried to open the application on desktops received a ‘5XX server error’ message.

Network intelligence company ThousandEyes said tests confirmed that the Facebook application became unreachable due to DNS failure.

“Facebook’s authoritative DNS nameservers became unreachable at that time,” it said in a statement.

Facebook's stocks have plummeted in the last day. In US real time. Picture: NASDAQ

Before this outage, Zuckerberg’s Facebook stock had already lost about 15 per cent in value from mid-September because of a whistleblower’s controversial claims about the company.

That means he’s lost a total of 20 per cent in a little over a fortnight.

On Monday, the whistleblower stepped into the spotlight, putting more scrutiny on the tech giant.

CBS news show “60 Minutes” aired a segment in which Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen alleged the social media giant knew its products were fuelling hate and harming children’s mental health.

Ms Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa who has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest, said in an interview that Facebook was “substantially worse” than anything she had seen before.

She called for the company to be regulated.

Originally published as Zuckerberg’s net worth drops $9 billion as Facebook share price plunges