Eight weeks after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook's stock price bounces back to where it was before the controversy
In March, The Guardian broke a story involving Facebook and data analytics company Cambridge Analytica. In the days following, Facebook stock plummeted. Some thought the scandal could be one the social network would be hard pressed to rebound from, but as this chart from Statista shows, Facebook is back to pre-Cambridge Analytica scandal stock prices as of May 10.
The hashtag #DeleteFacebook started trending almost immediately after users were informed that the analytics company had harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook profiles to influence voter decisions in the 2016 election. Facebook shares went down 18% in a little over a week, as investors feared users would follow through.
As it turns out, that didn't happen, and a series of events spanning seven weeks has made up for that week of damage: In addition to realizing that hardly any users were deleting their accounts, investors were pleased by CEO Mark Zuckerberg's apologies and his testimonies in front of Senators and House Representatives. On April 25, Facebook shared positive earnings results, and then topped it off with a successful annual developer conference on May 1.
