There is a view that we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of Facebook. Some critics even called it a colossus with feet of clay and compared it to other failed tech companies, such as AOL, that have lost their former glory. Back then, these predictions looked like mere jealousy, but today they sound quite convincing. The shares of Meta Platforms Inc. took a nosedive right after the earnings report was published. A record drop of 26% has been recognized as the biggest one-day loss in the history of the US stock market. The plunge in Meta’s market cap exceeded the previous record set by Apple on September 3, 2020 (-$180 billion) by $40 billion. The company's financial report showed that total revenue decreased by 20%, while earnings per share stood at $3.67 against $3.84 expected. Naturally, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth fell by almost $31 billion to $89.6 billion. He owns a 14% stake in Meta. Today, the tech behemoth has a strong competitor - TikTok. What is more, according to some reports, over half of Facebook user accounts are fake, and things can be even worse than that. In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg’s former Harvard classmate Aaron Greenspan published a report claiming that the real number of Facebook users is much less than stated. Greenspan said fake accounts made up more than half of all active users, which makes the company’s estimates highly unreliable. Facebook dined the findings but removed more than 2 billion fake accounts.
