As WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram experience global outages, Zuckerberg suffers a $7 billion loss

On Monday, social media platforms around the world experienced outages, with users unable to access them for hours.

As users logged in for information and connection with friends, the platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, all owned by Mark Zuckerberg, were unable to offer features unique to each other.

Only posts loaded before the glitch were available yesterday evening, according to our correspondent, and the refresh function for new posts was not churning out new Facebook posts.

Similarly, media content on the status bar was not updating or loading, despite the fact that it had been posted prior to the glitch.

The situation was similar on WhatsApp, where messages were not being delivered.

Ibrahim Musa, a platform user, said he had to turn off his phone twice because he couldn’t access the platforms.

“I was desperate to check Facebook because I had received an important message. Later, I learned from a colleague that I am not the only one who is having problems.”

When another user, Habib Taofeeq, messaged someone on WhatsApp, he had no idea the platforms had gone down.

“I tried refreshing my Facebook page as well, but it kept recycling old posts, so I assumed it was a network problem. It was only later that I discovered it was a widespread issue.”

@WhatsApp, on the other hand, used another social media platform, Twitter, to say: “We’re aware that some people are having issues with WhatsApp right now.”

“We’re working to restore normalcy and will provide an update as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your patience!”

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” @Facebook tweeted. We’re working hard to restore normalcy as soon as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them,” wrote @IstagramComms on Twitter. Please bear with us; we’re working on it! #istagramdown.”

After a whistleblower came forward and outages took Facebook Inc.’s flagship products offline, Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth dropped by nearly $7 billion in a few hours, knocking him down a notch on the list of the world’s richest people, according to Bloomberg.

Read also: South South APC Supports Modu Sheriff for Chairmanship

According to Bloomberg, a selloff sent the social media behemoth’s stock down around 5% on Monday, bringing its total loss to about 15% since mid-September.

The stock market decline on Monday reduced Zuckerberg’s net worth to $120.9 billion, putting him behind Bill Gates in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index at No. 5. According to the index, he has lost nearly $19 billion in wealth since September 13, when he was worth nearly $140 billion.

The Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of stories on September 13 based on a cache of internal documents, revealing that Facebook was aware of a wide range of issues with its products – such as Instagram’s negative impact on teenage girls’ mental health and misinformation about the Capitol riots on January 6 – while downplaying the issues in public.

The platforms were supposed to be back online at the time of filing this report.