The data breach concerning social media giant Facebook and the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica is impacting Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth. Indeed, Facebook’s founder and CEO lost more than $10 billion in wealth this week only as the shares of his company free fell by almost 14% in five days on the market share.
The loss meant that Zuckerberg’s net worth is now down to $65.1 billion and consequently, his fifth position in Forbes billionaires list is now down to seven but the financial hit could have been much worse since he had sold 7.3 million of Facebook shares since September 2017, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
The filings also report that Zuckerberg still owns more than 8.2 million Facebook shares after the most recent shares sale occurred this month.
Facebook’s worries begun at the end of last week when several news media websites all around the world spread the news that a data-mining firm called Cambridge Analytica, which campaigned for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, made use of the personal information from over 50 million users found on the social network to influence the elections by targeting specific voters.
Facebook did suspend the firm for its unfair use of private information as it went against the policy of social media website.
Zuckerberg admitted in a post on his website that the company “did a mistake” and needed to work upon the “breach of trust” of its users. He also agreed in several interviews that the social network should be more regulated and that he was willing to testify before Congress.
However, these admissions from the Facebook CEO did little in minimizing backlash against his company. Facebook Inc, lost over $50 billion in market value over the past two days. While Facebook’s platform is used by over 1 billion people daily, it’s market trading tumbled by 2.6 percent to $168.15 at the closure of New York’s trading on Tuesday. The company the possessed a market valuation of $492.6 billion. The shock, which was earlier already nursing losses of over 6.2 percent, had already lost 6.8 percent on Monday.