Don’t Let Facebook ZUCK Up our Democracy, a coalition of media advocacy organizations, human rights groups, pro-democracy activists, and fed-up Facebook users projected messages to Facebook shareholders on the evening before the annual Facebook shareholders meeting. The messages were projected onto Facebook's San Francisco offices at 181 Fremont Street. Activists are urging the shareholders to insist that Facebook protect the public from lies, hate, and disinformation in political advertisements during the 2020 election season. Shareholders will be considering a proposal to study and report on Facebook’s political ads policy (see the Facebook shareholders proxy statement, proposal seven, page 71), which exempts ads by politicians and political campaigns from Facebook’s community standards policy and its fact-checking process. “It’s outrageous that Facebook’s executives are opposing this shareholder proposal. The proposal doesn’t even ask for a change to the company’s political advertising policy—it just asks for a report on it,” said Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance. “If Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg won’t take responsibility for company policies that could jeopardize the integrity of the 2020 elections, then the shareholders should demand it.” For more information, see www.protestfacebook.org. ## | |
