Mark Zuckerberg loses $7 billion in hours as his social media networks plunges

After a whistleblower came out and outages brought Facebook Inc.’s major products offline, Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune dropped by over $7 billion in a matter of hours, dropping him down a notch on the list of the world’s richest individuals.

The stock of the social media behemoth fell approximately 5% on Monday, bringing its total loss to around 15% since mid-September.

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

Facebook has responded by emphasizing that the problems that its products face, such as political divisiveness, are complicated and not created by technology.

Facebook has responded by emphasizing that the problems that its products face, such as political divisiveness, are complicated and not caused by technology alone.

“I think it gives people comfort to assume that there must be a technological or a technical explanation for the issues of political polarization in the United States,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, told CNN