Meta does not raise its head: accumulates 2,000 million in fines since 2018

Mark Zuckerberg continues in free fall. The billionaire founder of Facebook, who today accumulates a fortune of 51,000 million dollars, could not have started the year in a worse way. The American businessman ended 2022 losing 100,000 million in just 13 monthsand at the beginning of 2023 your company has already received two fines for a joint value of 390 million.

In the latter case, it was once again Ireland, which through the Data Protection Commission (Meta’s main regulator in Europe in terms of data protection) has fined Zuckerberg’s company for managing the data of its two main social networks, Facebook and Instagram. The first, for a value of 210 million; and the second, of 180.

The Commission has concluded that, contrary to its obligations, Meta did not “clearly” inform users, who did not have sufficient knowledge of what processing operations were being carried out with their personal data and for what purposes. Likewise, the regulator has urged Meta to comply with the legislation within a maximum period of three months.

The news has little affected some investors who already took the fine for granted in the company’s accounts. In fact, Meta is revalued by almost 14% in the two weeks that we have been this year.

On the other hand, the European Commission has recently accused Meta (December 2022) of abuse of a dominant position, being the first time that the Competition has targeted Zuckerberg’s company for this reason. These types of sanctions can lead to fines of up to 10% of annual revenue worldwide.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal

2018 was the year in which, in addition to the entry into force of the new European Union regulation on data protection, the figure of Mark Zuckerberg began to be questioned as a result of the British market research firm Cambridge Analytica, linked to the Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and who accessed the data of up to 87 million users of the social network, including status updates, indications of “likes” and even private messages.

Investigations in the United States and Europe led to considerable falls in the stock market (in one day, the value of Facebook fell 37,000 million) and, during that year, Zuckerberg saw his assets decrease 20,000 million dollars, largely due to the scandal from Cambridge Analytica. Precisely, at the end of December 2022 Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, agreed to pay 725 million dollars to settle that class action lawsuit.

A 2022 to forget

As for fines, 2022 will undoubtedly go down in the negative history of the company. In the aforementioned December for the Cambridge Analytica case, the DPC already fined the Californian giant with 405 millions in September due to failures in the processing of minors’ data on Instagram, and with 265 million in November for not sufficiently protecting the data of its users.

In 2021, Europe fined Meta with 225 million for breaching data protection on WhatsApp. In this sense, the Irish regulator decided to impose this important punishment on the Facebook application for its lack of transparency regarding what the law requires. With all this, Meta has accumulated losses in fines since 2018 of 2,010 million dollars.

Repercussion on the stock market

All of this, together with the company’s commitment to the metaverse, has pushed the company led by Zuckerberg back on the stock market until it currently registers a market capitalization of 364,000 million dollars, moving further and further away from the global ‘top 10’ that it comfortably occupied. not so long ago He entered it in 2015 and came to settle in fourth position in 2017. After touching a billion dollars in 2021, he left the privileged list last summer as a result of his disastrous 2022.

Last year, the firm lost 64.22% of its market value, the worst year in its history. In fact, only on another occasion did it close its financial year on the stock market in the red: in 2018 it fell by 25.71%.

Despite everything, whoever bought the company’s shares at the beginning of 2013 accumulates a juicy return of 390% in a decade, going from $28 then to $137 at which it is currently listed.