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The past two weeks have been difficult for the tech sector by every measure. Tech stocks have largely driven the year’s stock market decline, the largest quarterly drop since 2015.
Facebook saw more than $50bn shaved off its value after the Observer revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested millions of people’s user data for political profiling. Now users are deleting accounts, and regulators may seek to limit how the company monetizes data, threatening Facebook’s business model.
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed it was investigating the company’s data practices. Additionally, Facebook said it would send a top executive to London to appear in front of U.K. lawmakers, but it would not send the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who is increasingly seen as isolated and aloof.
Shares of Facebook declined more than 17 percent from the close on Friday, March 16, to the close on Thursday before the Easter break.
Amazon, meanwhile, long the target of President Trump’s ire, saw more than $30bn, or 5 percent, shaved off its $693bn market capitalization after it was reported that the president was “obsessed” with the company and that he “wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law.”
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