Facebook investors grill Zuckerberg: 'Emulate George Washington, not Vladimir Putin'
Facebook investors grill Zuckerberg: 'Emulate George
Washington, not Vladimir Putin'
JP Mangalindan Chief Tech Correspondent Yahoo Finance May
31, 2018
Facebook’s (FB) shareholder meeting on Thursday was a
heated affair, as investors vented their frustrations over the social network’s
handling of recent scandals.
“If privacy is a human right … then we contend that
Facebook’s poor stewardship of user data is tantamount to a human rights
violation,” stated Christine Jantz, chief investment officer at Northstar Asset
Management, which is a Facebook investor.
Facebook risked becoming a “corporate dictatorship,”
James McRitchie, a Facebook investor, said to Zuckerberg.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, take a page from history,” McRitchie
added. “Emulate George Washington, not Vladimir Putin.”
This is a good way to ‘hold us accountable’
Investors’ harsh remarks stemmed from recent
controversies, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal that engulfed the
company earlier this year. In mid-March, reports emerged that Cambridge
Analytica, a political consulting firm that shut down earlier this month, had
acquired Facebook user data sold by researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Kogan had
developed a personality quiz app on Facebook called This is Your Digital Life
that surveyed 270,000 users.
Because of the high level of access Facebook gave
developers at the time, Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest the data of the
friends of those 270,000 users, affecting up to 87 million individuals in all.
The ensuing fallout from the controversy saw Facebook get hammered in the media
and on Wall Street.
Zuckerberg, for his part, pledged the social network
would be more transparent in its efforts moving forward, such as putting out
reports on fake accounts.
“[This is a] good way to have people in the community
judge our process toward this and hold us accountable,” Zuckerberg added.
Also at the meeting, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
announced that it would adopt the Diverse Slate Approach for future board
appointments, a technique Sandberg said Facebook was already doing
unofficially.
Facebook first rolled out the Diverse Slate Approach for
hiring back in 2015. The strategy, which is similar to the NFL’s Rooney Rule,
requires Facebook hiring managers to at least consider underrepresented people
for positions.
Added Sandberg: “We wanted to make that commitment
publicly.”
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