How much did the blocking of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram cost to Zuckerberg

How much did the blocking of Facebook

The downtime of the three social networks caused millionaire losses for the company, while the US authorities return to the attack for a stew

(Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images) The blocking of Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Messenger ended just before midnight on Monday, October 4, after a global outage that lasted nearly six hours. On the one hand, millions of users looking for communication, information or entertainment channels could not reach their pages, update their Instagram feed or contact friends and colleagues on WhatsApp. On the other hand, Menlo Park's profit machine has suffered a multimillion-dollar hitch growing with every turn of the hands. A router configuration change knocked out the company's services for a few hours.

Taking Facebook's 2020 revenues of $ 85.97 billion as a benchmark, Monday's social downtime could be cost the company over $ 163,000 in lost revenue per minute, or just under $ 60 million, based on six hours of inactivity. Referring instead to the most recent second quarter of 2021, when the tech giant grossed $ 29.08 billion in 91 days (+ 56%), the figure translates to $ 13.3 million per hour and therefore almost 80 million. dollars, although Fortune estimates go as high as $ 100 million. During the telematic crisis, Facebook used Twitter to keep users updated: more than 6 hours have passed from the announcement of the failure to the resumption of the service.

The antitrust ax

The lost revenue, in any case, is little compared to the market capitalization that went up in smoke on Monday: 47.3 billion less, due to a drop in the stock market of -4.9%, observes MarketWatch. The company's shares have already fallen by 15% since mid-September and now Facebook's valuation is 919.79 billion, a figure that ousts it from the small club of companies that are worth trillion, consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple. . The Zuckerberg empire had entered it in late June on the wave of investor enthusiasm, after a court ruling rejected a Federal trade commission petition on Facebook's monopoly charge, giving a sprint of the 4% to the title, on that day.

Menlo Park, however, still has to play in defense: the body led by Lina Khan had in fact the faculty to resubmit an amended petition accused of having crushed or bought rivals to suppress competition. The Ftc asks that Instagram and WhatsApp be sold and Facebook has asked the judge to reject this second round "with prejudice". A further worry for Zuckerberg, who owns 14% of the shares of Facebook and the fall of the stock was perceived in his portfolio with 6 billion dollars lost. His personal fortune is now $ 121.6 billion (it was $ 140 billion a few weeks ago), slipping to fifth place under Bill Gates on Bloomberg's list of the richest on the planet.

All this, while the revelations of informant Frances Haugen have opened the third front for weeks. The data scientist came forward in a televised interview after revealing internal documents to the Wall Street Journal that prove Facebook was aware of Instagram's harm to teenagers and did not do enough to curb hate content on Facebook. while being able to intervene, as in the assault on the Capitol of January 6.


Social Network - 2 hours ago

What was the cause of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram down


Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram were down for six hours


For a former employee, against fake news and hate Facebook does not do what it promises

Topics

Facebook Instagram Mark Zuckerberg WhatsApp globalData.fldTopic = "Facebook, Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, WhatsApp"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

---

Facebook executive says it's 'ludicrous' to blame Jan. 6 on social media

(CNN) -- A senior Facebook executive said on 'Reliable Sources' Sunday that the company will never be able to control all the content on its site, and may be open to regulation as lawmakers continue to crack down on the tech giant.

Facebook's vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, was pushing back after last week's damning Wall Street Journal investigation based on internal documents company documents found that the company was aware of problems in its platforms. The whistleblower who leaked the documents will appear tonight on '60 Minutes,' where they will reveal their identity ahead of testifying before a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday.

In its introduction to the eight-part investigation, the Journal wrote, 'Time and again, the documents show, Facebook's researchers have identified the platform's ill effects. Time and again, despite congressional hearings, its own pledges and numerous media exposés, the company didn't fix them.' The documents the outlet obtained, 'offer perhaps the clearest picture thus far of how broadly Facebook's problems are known inside the company, up to the chief executive himself.'

'There is no perfection on social media as much as in any other walk of life,' Clegg told CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter. 'And then what we have to do is address that.'

Teens who already have low esteem will go on social media and begin comparing themselves to others, Clegg said, and Facebook can't control the 'basic human tendency' of comparison.

'I don't think it's intuitively surprising that if you're not feeling great about yourself already, then going onto social media can actually make you feel a bit worse,' Clegg said. In the wake of the WSJ's reporting, Clegg said Facebook will introduce parental controls and tools that will be designed to nudge teens away from dwelling on certain content.

Controlling the fire

Stelter then asked Clegg why Facebook didn't simply release the internal research itself, instead of being put in the position of having a whistleblower leak the documents.

The question of whether Facebook 'deliberately brushed [the research] under the carpet has got literally got it back-to-front,' Clegg said. He added, 'If we don't want to address those questions we wouldn't commission the research in the first place. We do it precisely so that we can work out in the minority of cases where people are not having a good experience on our platforms.' He added that Facebook publishes thousands of peer-reviewed research and confirmed that the company will continue to do research.

But Clegg acknowledged that Facebook has been facing mounting criticism for not being able to control what it has created.

'We're never going to be absolutely on top of this 100% of the time, because this is an instantaneous and spontaneous form of communication,' Clegg said. 'There's a world of a difference between doing a peer-reviewed exercise in cooperation with other academics and preparing papers internally to provoke and inform internal discussion.'

Facebook claimed success in 2021's second quarter for lowering the prevalence of hate speech on its platform for three straight quarters. But The New York Times has reported that the Journal's whistleblower will soon publicly accuse Facebook for relaxing its 2020 election security safeguards too soon, allowing misinformation and groups to gather on the website, some of whom stormed the Capitol in Jan. 6.

Clegg called this claim 'ludicrous,' and said Facebook held no responsibility for that what happened that day.

'The responsibility for the violence of Jan. 6 lies squarely with the people who inflicted the violence and those who encouraged them, including President Trump,' Clegg said.

Clegg acknowledged that regulation of its platform could be 'really helpful' if it relaxed privacy and data protection rules, which could allow Facebook external researchers to gain access to sensitive data.

Ahead of the 60 Minutes interview, Facebook was playing offense, downplaying claims that the company is the cause of political and social polarization in the US. Clegg claimed WSJ made 'deliberate mischaracterizations' in its investigative series in a release two weeks ago.

'None of Facebook's defenses cited a single, factual error in our reporting,' a statement from the Journal said. The news outlet said it has asked Facebook to release the internal research it reported on, which Clegg did not confirm Facebook would do.

Clegg's responses and occasional stonewlaling prompted Stelter to say, 'a part of me feels like I'm interviewing the head of a tobacco company right now.' Clegg responded that the comparison is 'profoundly false.'

'There has to be a reason why a third of the world's population enjoys using these apps,' Clegg said.

The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.