As Facebook grapples with trouble from conservative critics and what it claims is misinformation it wants to stop, chieftain Mark Zuckerberg (shown) faces yet another stockholders rebellion.
Big investors want Zuckerberg out and a neutral chairman appointed because of the social-media behemoth’s dipping stock price and bruised reputation.
In 2017, Zuckerberg, the company’s majority shareholder, put down a similar rebellion, and neither is this one likely to succeed.
But it is a sign that Facebook faces trouble beyond its reputation as hostile to conservatives.
Shareholder Revolt
According to Reuters, “four major U.S. public funds that hold shares in Facebook Inc on Wednesday proposed removing Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg as chairman following several high-profile scandals and said they hoped to gain backing from larger asset managers.”
Those shareholders aren’t exactly small fry in the investment world: The treasurers of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, as well the New York City Comptroller, filed the proposal. “They oversee money including pension funds and joined activist and original filer Trillium Asset Management,” the wire service reported.
The officials know they will lose because Zuckerberg owns the majority of Facebook shares. The goal: Send a message.
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The proposal in question, Reuters reported, seeks an independent board chairman, and “cites controversies that have hurt the reputation of the world’s largest social media network, including the unauthorized sharing of user information, the proliferation of fake news, and foreign meddling in U.S. elections.”
As The New American reported this summer, Facebook’s year on the stock market hasn’t been good. On July 26, the social-media giant’s stock price sank 20 percent, and the company lost $120 billion in market capitalization, the largest one-day dive in history. The share price dropped from $217.50 to $176.26
Zuckerberg took a bath, too: His personal fortune dropped from $71 billion to $55.1 billion.
At yesterday’s close, the stock price was even lower, $159.42. That’s 26.7 percent less than the $217.50 of July 25, the eve of the big collapse, and 9.5 percent lower than the price at market’s close on July 26.
Internal Rebellion
Zuckerberg also faces the widespread belief among a significant number of users, employees, and important politicians that Facebook is censoring conservatives views.
Zuckerberg has denied that charge in meeting with politicians on two continents, here and in Europe. He claims Facebook is open to all political views, even though it was caught censoring conservatives.
That’s why one top Facebook engineer organized the group FBers for Political Diversity, published a memo about the political repression of conservative employees, and finally quit.
Brian Amerige spoke to Fox talker Tucker Carlson. “You can’t have conversations about … anything that’s a tenet of the social justice ideology,” he told Carlson. “You can’t even have conversations about that policy inside the company without having your character attacked — and I’ve experienced this personally — without being called a sexist or a racist or a transphobe or an Islamophobe.”
The leftists who control the conservation at Facebook are little better that Stalinist enforcers, the Ayn Rand acolyte said. Funny thing is, the controllers are a minority who are “unbelievably belligerent, demanding and hostile not just toward other employees, but toward Facebook leadership directly.” Facebook’s managers don’t know how to handle the SJWs.
Amerige reprised the memo he wrote a few months ago, “We Have a Problem with Political Diversity.”
“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” he explained in that complaint. “We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.” He then described the totalitarian atmosphere:
Employees are afraid to say anything when they disagree with what’s around them politically. HR has told me that this is not a rare concern, and I’ve personally gotten over a hundred messages to that effect. Your colleagues are afraid because they know that they — not their ideas — will be attacked.
They know that all the talk of “openness to different perspectives” does not apply to causes of “social justice,” immigration, “diversity”, and “equality.” On this issue, you can either keep quiet or sacrifice your reputation and career….
We’re quick to suggest firing people who turn out to be misunderstood, and even quicker to conclude our colleagues are bigots.
Thus did Amerige invite employees to join FBers for Political Diversity, which now, he wrote in a departure note obtained by Business Insider, has 750 members.
Wrote Amerige: “I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that’s how I know it’s time to go.”
Photo: AP Images
