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Facebook faced a gambling day Thursday as its shares plunged into the steepest decline of a day in stock market history.
The 19% drop spewed $ 119 billion of stock market value; CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth fall by about $ 16 billion as a result. It was the worst trading day of Facebook since its launch in 2012; The collapse overshadowed Intel 's $ 91 billion decline in September 2000, ignoring inflation.
The fall followed Facebook's warning on Wednesday night that its revenue growth will slow considerably for at least the rest of the year and that spending will continue to climb
TO KNOW PLUS: Zuckerberg's net worth drops nearly 19 billion US dollars
The index collapses: Facebook shares are no longer that back seen for the first time early May . At that time, the stock was still recovering from a previous privacy scandal, in which a political consulting firm linked to President Donald Trump improperly accessed data from tens of millions of Facebook users [19659006]. : Is this a temporary setback, or the beginning of a new painful road for the giant social network? And does such a wait wait for other high-tech behemoths?
Slower growth forecasts and heavier expenditures reflect problems largely due to Facebook's own making.
WATCH: Facebook's value plummets; what does this mean for users?
New European rules on privacy protection, inspired in part by Facebook's relentless exploration of its own users' data, are beginning to hobble the company's advertising activities . And the increase in spending aims, inter alia, to prevent a repetition of false news and propaganda that Russian agents have unleashed on an unsupervised Facebook in an attempt to influence the presidential election of 2016.
Zuckerberg even noted during a call to badysts that "We are investing so much in security that it will have a significant impact on our profitability."
Overall, the tech giants – Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and others – have experienced almost unprecedented revenue and share price growth. They seemed irrepressible, even in the face of regulatory pressure, user dissatisfaction and broader existential questions about their impact on society. Technology companies represent six of the ten largest companies in the S & P 500 index.
WATCH: £ 500,000 fine for Facebook in a data scandal in the UK
Some see the Facebook sale as a clear proof that nothing can grow forever, especially not the biggest companies in the world, especially not at the pace of promising and agile startups. Facebook's business figure continues to grow at a rate twice as fast as Twitter's. A decade or so ago, almost no one would have imagined that Facebook would count more than 2 billion users, let alone its family of apps – Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger – would also count billions of members.
"Nobody knows where up, where this growth slows," said Phil Bak, CEO of Exponential ETF and former chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, who said he had warned investors of a potential sale of large technology stocks
could become even more difficult.These European privacy regulations, known as the "General Data Privacy Regulation" or GDPR, came into effect remained that one month in the second quarter.This means that Facebook could feel its effects more strongly later this year.
WATCH: The stock of Facebook plunges
For over a year – since Zuckerberg issued a 5,000 word manifesto claiming that Facebook must improve the world by strengthening civic engagement and fighting social ills – Company seems divided between its philosophical mission and its economic. Wednesday was perhaps the first time this tension opened, probably because it was threatening the interest of all investors: the money
Michael Connor , whose Open Mic group is helping investors push technology companies to other issues, says it's "too early" to see if Facebook's efforts to improve will prove fruitful. But the real question, he said, is whether the company can "continue to do what it faces the Wall Street critics."
Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of A New Book, "The Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Breaches Democracy," Rejected importance of falling stocks.
"Mark Zuckerberg does not panic," he said. "The Facebook panel does not panic, most of its big institutional investors do not panic, they know they're here for the long game."
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