Sell-off wipes $59bn off Facebook market capitalization in 3 days

A sell-off in Facebook shares entered its third day Wednesday as the backlash against the world’s biggest social network continues to mount in the wake of revelations over the weekend that data from millions of users were harvested and used without permission.

The group, one of America’s most valuable companies and a Wall Street star over the past few years, saw its shares fall as much as 2.9 percent to $163 in early trade, before trimming its losses to 2.1 percent. The drop takes Facebook’s fall this week to 11 percent, wiping about $59 billion off its market capitalisation.

The latest decline comes a day after a Facebook investor filed a class-action lawsuit against the social network, alleging the company had misled investors by failing to disclose earlier the improper harvesting of data belonging to millions of users. Facebook said it knew about the problem in 2015, but believed the data had been deleted.

“As a result of Defendants’ wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s common shares, Plaintiff and other Class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” said the lawsuit by Fan Yuan.

But on Monday the company said it was “committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information”.