COSTLY DATA

Facebook Stock Plunges After 2016 Election Data Scandal

The social network lost $42 billion in market value since the story broke Friday.

Facebook slid $42 billion in market value since The New York Times reported Friday that Cambridge Analytica “harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission.” After a weekend of backlash, the social network’s stock was down seven percent Monday, while the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than one percent. The stock drop also comes as the social-networking site investigates employee Joseph Chancellor’s ties to the data firm. Chancellor is currently a “virtual reality researcher” at Facebook but was the former director of Global Science Research (GSR)—the firm who provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, according to CBS News. A GSR spokesperson told CBS “there was no recollection of any interactions or emails” with Chancellor. Over the weekend, Facebook suspended from the platform former Cambridge Analytica employee and whistleblower Christopher Wylie along with former GSR director Aleksandr Kogan.