Mark Zuckerberg Purchases 110 More Acres of Land on the Island of Kauai

Co-founder of Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook) Mark Zuckerberg has purchased another 110 acres for a whopping $ 17 million to add to his controversial 1,500-acre estate in Kauai, Hawaii, according to The Guardian. The land includes the Ka Loko reservoir, a reservoir whose dam broke in 2006 releasing 400 million gallons of water and killing seven people. 

The reservoir is considered high-risk but Zuckerberg and his wife are committed to fulfilling the legal requirements to repair it. The couple's spokesperson Ben Labolt told Business Insider that “Mark and Priscilla continue to make their home at Ko’olau Ranch,” and that they had “worked closely with a number of community partners to operate a working ranch, promote conservation, produce sustainable agriculture and protect wildlife and look forward to expanding their efforts to include this additional property”.

Zuckerberg’s estate so far has been quite controversial. In 2016, Zuckerberg built a 6 ft (~1.80 m) stone wall around his property that hindered easy access to Pila’a Beach. This was obviously not well received by neighbors.

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In 2017, the billionaire filed lawsuits against hundreds of local Hawaiians that could have forced landowners to auction off their properties and required them to pay the legal fees of the plaintiff. In the end, Zuckerberg did not go through with the lawsuits saying that he and his wife wanted to find a better approach and leading the lands to be sold at an auction to a bidder who was supported by Zuckerberg.

“This is the face of neocolonialism,” said at the time to The Guardian Kapua Sproat, a law professor at the University of Hawaii. “Even though a forced sale may not physically displace people, it’s the last nail in the coffin of separating us from the land. For us, as native Hawaiians, the land is an ancestor. It’s a grandparent … You just don’t sell your grandmother."

Last month, the tech billionaire lost more than $6 billion in just a handful of hours after his tech empire's websites (including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) all crashed.