A group of shareholders are proposing ousting Mark Zuckerberg as the current CEO of Facebook, with an independent chairperson reinstated in his place to oversee operations at the world’s biggest social media company.
The proposal to this effect has been put forward by the consumer watchdog group SumOfUs with some of their members being Facebook shareholders as well. However, while 333,000 people signed the petition seeking removal of Zuckerberg from the top spot, it is actually 1,500 that hold shares of the social media company.
That no doubt makes for a small minority with their proposal not likely to make much of an impact at the way Facebook operates. The company is still expected to make a proxy filing in April which happens to be the routine procedure in response to proposals made by shareholders. Zuckerberg alone accounts for the majority of the shares of the company.
Facebook had earlier come for a lot of flak after it was found promoting fake news in its trending news sections. In fact, none might have ever guessed how much of an impact the fake news at Facebook might have after the same was found to have played a decisive role in improving Trump’s chances during the presidential elections.
Facebook responded to the allegations by removing human employees that earlier were engaged in selecting the trending news. Instead, the job is now been done by an algorithm based artificial intelligence system that populates the trending news section.
It is this along with a few other factors such as public accountability with respect to what Facebook does or preaches is what prompted the online community SomeOfUS to move their proposal. The group works towards making companies whose operations impact a huge section of the society at large to be more accountable to a range of global issues such as climate change, racial discrimination, human rights, corruption and such.
SomeOfUS are also claiming having an independent chairperson is the best way to instill good governance within Facebook by creating a balance between the board and the CEO. The community is also citing a 2016 decision taken by the Facebook board that effectively curbed the rights of Class A voters without seeking their majority votes. The group also expressed concerned at Facebook’s corporate governance score which was found to be at the highest risk level of 10 as of Jan. 23, 2017.
