Facebook outage cost Mark Zuckerberg an estimated $6 billion
Last Monday saw Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram go offline for almost six hours, impacting more than 3.5 billion users worldwide. Facebook shares plummeted and Zuckerberg himself was thought to have lost $6 billion. Downdetector, which tracks outages, recorded around 10.6 million problems, the largest number it has ever recorded.
Facebook took yet another hit after a former Facebook employee told US politicians that the company’s site and apps harm children’s mental health and stoke division in society. Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to staff that “We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It’s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives”. As if Facebook’s week couldn’t get any worse, it apologised yet again on Friday after reporting problems with Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Workplace products.
Pandora Papers
Last Sunday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published an investigation, nicknamed the Pandora Papers, which leaked almost 12 million documents. This revealed hidden wealth, tax avoidance, and money laundering by some of the world’s richest and powerful people. These include the Qatari ruling family, who avoided £18.5 million tax on a mansion in London. It also exposed how more than 330 politicians, from 90 countries, use secret offshore companies to hide their wealth.
Twitch leak reveals top streamers have made millions in the past 3 years.
The live-streaming site Twitch says that an ‘error’ caused the leak which revealed huge amounts of sensitive data. Last Wednesday more than 100GB of data was posted online, which appeared to include Twitch’s internal code and documents as well as the payments made to thousands of top streamers.
Children as young as nine are seeing anti-vaccine TikToks
Conspiracy theories and lies about Covid-19 have gained millions of views on TikTok and are accessible to young children. NewsGuard, which monitors online misinformation, revealed that some TikTok accounts that discourage vaccination against the virus and spread myths about Covid survival rates have thousands of followers. The organisation said that it published these findings in June and sent them to WHO and the UK government, but that the content remained on the platform. This information comes amid concern about the impact that social media is having on children, after it was reported that Instagram had internal research showing it was harming teenagers. Even though the app only permits full access for those 13+, NewsGuard found that accounts could be created on the app by entering fake dates of birth.
