Meta shares fall, surprises Mark Zuckerberg with 26% loss.

The drop in the social networking giant's stock comes after the company issued disappointing forecasts, blaming Apple's privacy changes and growing competition.

U.S. tech giants have come under increasing pressure in 2022 as investors expect Federal Reserve policy tightening to erode the sector's rich valuations after years of outrageous interest rates. The Nasdaq lost more than 8% in January, its worst monthly decline since late 2019.

Shares of Facebook owner Meta fell 20% Thursday in U.S. premarket trading after the social networking giant issued a disappointing forecast, blaming Apple's privacy changes and growing competition.

Meta posted a decline in the number of daily active users for the first time from the previous quarter, as the race for users with rivals such as TikTok, the video-sharing platform owned by China's Byte Dance, heats up.

Investors' bearish reaction was partly explained by Facebook's global daily active users declining for the first time from the previous quarter. In turn, for the first quarter of the year, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg offered lower forecasts than expected by the market, in terms of its turnover.

The technology company's executives stated that the company's weaker performance over the last time is largely related to the measures taken by Apple to improve user privacy.

Meta's market value fell to more than $230 billion to a market capitalization of about $661 billion, overshooting Meta's market cap. It is the largest one-day drop in U.S. history.