Zuckerberg loses $3 billion after FB, Insta outage
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg experienced a nearly $3 billion loss in a single day following a global outage affecting the company’s flagship platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg’s net worth dropped by $2.79 billion on Tuesday, March 5, settling at $176 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Despite this significant decrease, he maintained his position as the world’s fourth-richest individual.
The outage, lasting about an hour worldwide, led to a 1.6 per cent decline in Meta’s shares, contributing to the reduction in Zuckerberg’s net worth. Meta’s shares closed the overnight trading session on Wall Street at $490.22 each.
On Tuesday night, users encountered difficulties accessing Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Additionally, Meta Quest users experienced login issues with their headsets, while some YouTube users faced errors while using the platform.
Although the outage lasted approximately an hour, all applications eventually returned to normal functionality. Throughout the disruption, users encountered ‘failure to load’ error pages on Instagram and Facebook, but some Instagram users, however, were still able to view older stories. Notably, many Facebook accounts were automatically logged out during this period.
During the outage, affected individuals flooded social media platform X with posts, with X’s owner, Elon Musk, seizing the opportunity to humorously mock Meta for its platform failure, remarking, “If you’re reading this post, it’s because our servers are working.”
