On Monday, social media giant Facebook' shares tanked 7 per cent after reports suggested that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to influence elections.
Facebook's iconic co-founder Mark Zuckerberg lost a whopping $6.06 billion worth of investor wealth as his company saw the biggest single-day decline since 2014. Zuckerberg owns over 40 crore Facebook shares whose valuation is in the tune of $68.5 billion. The hit in Facebook's stock spilled over to other scrips as overall tech stocks slipped 2 per cent on NASDAQ.
Following the claims against Facebook, Britain's information commissioner said she will seek a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica's servers because the British firm had been "uncooperative" in her investigation. Late on Friday, Late Friday, Facebook had said that said Cambridge improperly obtained information from 270,000 people who downloaded an app described as a personality test. Those people agreed to share data with the app for research — not for political targeting. And the data included who their Facebook friends were and what they liked — even though those friends hadn't downloaded the app or given explicit consent.
(With agency inputs)