Things are not looking good for Meta and bad decisions have dragged the company into a crisis that seems to find no brake: a report by “Loss” which is generating a lot of noise in the Silicon Valley tech industry question continuity by Mark Zuckerberg as CEO of the company.

Criticism over the effort to prop up the metaverse and investor pressure could be crucial in the Facebook creator’s decision.

To stop the tide of rumors, Andy StoneMeta spokesperson, said in a tweet on Tuesday that a media report on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s resignation next year it was fake.

Despite the denial, the report by The Leak reports it, citing an internal source the executive itself he would have made the decision to step aside, as he does not believe himself capable of reversing the course of events.

The report doesn’t offer much other material, though it does mention that Mark Zuckerberg’s supposed departure wouldn’t change plans around the metaverse. Many feel that it could be a way out to decompress the increasingly difficult investor relations.

Even the context in which the company is located does not help. Meta disclosed negative results in its financial report for the third quarter of 2022.

Additionally, costs and expenses were up nearly 20% year-over-year, while Reality Labs, the division responsible for virtual reality and metaverse projects, reported losses of $3.7 billion, keeping the series familiar.

A 4% year-over-year decline in revenue was compounded by a 52% decline in earnings, which sent the stock price down nearly 25%.

Which implies that the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp lost $80,000 million. Even if not only Meta’s finances were affected, but also those of Zuckerberg himself, who lost 70% of his fortune.

The changes in Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune are related to the performance of Meta. After all, the entrepreneur is not only the founder and managing director: he is also the majority shareholder.

So far in 2022, Mark Zuckerberg’s company has been severely punished for its performance. In February, after news that Facebook had lost active users for the first time in its history, shares of the company plunged 26.4% and wiped out $230 billion.

Goal: More threats ahead

It’s not the first time Zuckerberg has been surrounded by rumors of an abrupt exit. Four years ago, in the Cambridge Analytica case, in which his user data was used to help then-candidate Donald Trump, he had to come out to deny his resignation.

On that occasion, the president of the then Facebook, clarified during a short conference that he did not think of resigning despite the problems that the social network was experiencing.

The New York Times had pointed out that Facebook had not disclosed everything it knew about Russian interference and that it had hired a communications bureau to spread negative information about other Silicon Valley companies to divert attention.

“A lot of stuff in that article that we talked to reporters about before and told them what we had seen wasn’t true, and they still ran it,” Zuckerberg said.

SL