A series of unfortunate events: Facebook saw rough week thanks to global outage, New Zealand live-streamed shooting

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has had a very bad week, even in the context of a very bad year.

The week of bad news actually started March 8 with a proposal from U.S. senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to break up the company. Then there was the longest-ever outage of Facebook’s social network and services, which almost overshadowed news of a criminal investigation into its data agreements with other companies. Facebook’s technical glitch was resolved just in time for it to post the departure of two key executives, including the one closely linked with the company’s most iconic product. But the ultimate blow came on Friday with the massacre of 50 people in New Zealand, streamed live on Facebook.

“Hedge funds who were previously complacent about the recent negative headlines are raising eyebrows on the news overnight,” Lynx Equity Strategies analyst Jahanara Nissar wrote in a note. The departure of two top executives also was “concerning — especially given that the conflict was over strategy.”

The snowball of bad news is catching up with the company. The shares had their worst day in more than two months Friday, falling 2.5 per cent to close at $165.98.

The weekend didn’t offer much respite. Facebook said it managed to prevent 1.2 million uploads of the massacre video in the first 24 hours, but 300,000 versions made it to the platform before being removed. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she wants talks with Facebook on the issue of live streaming. AirAsia Group Bhd Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes, one of Asia’s best-known executives, said Sunday he shut his account with 670,000 followers because of the “amount of hate” on social media.

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the question is “how do you stop these crazy people” who are “willing to go on live TV and stream the murder of people.” He said “Donald Trump is no more to blame from what happened in New Zealand than Mark Zuckerberg.”

It might be time to force social-media providers to delay live broadcasting or streaming, Tom Bossert, former homeland security adviser for President Donald Trump, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“It’ll require some time and money, but I think it’s something that we should consider,” Bossert said.

Jeh Johnson, former Homeland Security secretary under President Barack Obama, said on ABC that can be done but the government must be careful about regulating speech. Social media and internet service providers must be more vigilant about self-regulating hate speech content that violates their terms of service, he said.