San Francisco: Mark Zuckerberg just became $7.2 billion poorer after a flurry of companies pulled advertising from Facebook’s network.
Shares of the social media giant fell 8.3 per cent on Friday, the most in three months, after Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers, joined other brands in boycotting adverts on the social network. Unilever said it would stop spending money with Facebook’s properties this year.
The share-price drop eliminated $56bn from Facebook’s market value and pushed Zuckerberg’s net worth down to $82.3bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That also moved Zuckerberg down one notch to fourth place, overtaken by Louis Vuitton boss Bernard Arnault, who was elevated to one of the world’s three richest people along with Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.
Companies from Verizon Communications to Hershey have also stopped social media adverts after critics said that Facebook has failed to sufficiently police hate speech and disinformation on the platform. Coca-Cola said it would pause all paid advertising on all social media platforms for 30 days.