Investors punishing Facebook,

SOME ANALYSTS SEE ONLY ‘HEADLINE RISK’ IN SHARE DROP THAT COULD PRESENT A BUYING OPPORUTUNITY

in New York Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune dropped $4.9 billion on paper Monday as investors weighed reports that a political advertising firm retained information on millions of Facebook Inc. users without their consent.

Facebook said Friday that Cambridge Analytica, the advertising data firm that helped Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency, received user data through an app developer on its social network, violating its policies. The company harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without permission, The New York Times reported.

It was a punishing day for other tech billionaires too. Amazon.

com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos lost $2.1 billion (all figures U.S.) and the fortunes of Alphabet Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each declined $1.5 billion as a technology selloff sent the Nasdaq indexes to the steepest losses in six weeks.

Facebook shares fell 6.8 per cent to $172.56, cutting Zuckerberg’s fortune to $70.4 billion and dropping him one place to fifth on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He’s now behind Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Amancio Ortega.

Facebook investors were making themselves heard, sending the stock to its biggest intra-day selloff since September 2012. Lots of other people aired their grievances via Twitter.

A Bloomberg count of negative sentiment expressed on Twitter hit its highest level since Feb. 2, 2017, following reports that a political advertising firm retained information on millions of Facebook users without their consent.