Yahoo Finance Mark Zuckerberg faces shareholder protest over child safety
Mark Zuckerberg is facing a shareholder revolt over Facebook and Instagram’s approach to child safety, as his social media empire comes under growing scrutiny for its impact on adolescents.
The advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis have told investors to support a shareholder proposal calling for more disclosures over how parent company Meta approaches keeping children safe.
The resolution, which will be voted on at Wednesday’s annual meeting, calls for Meta to set targets to measure how it affects child safety and report annually on its performance. It has been put forward by Lisette Cooper, the mother of Sarah Cooper, who said she was groomed over Facebook at the age of 15.
Meta often faces pressure from investors over its approach to child safety, and the non-binding resolutions have no chance of passing, since Mr Zuckerberg has majority control over Meta’s shares.
However, new laws designed to protect children online mean that shareholders consider there to be a growing risk if Meta is seen as taking a lax approach to child safety.
The shareholder proposal, which is also supported by a string of church groups, says: “Meta’s website lists some steps taken to improve child safety, but it has no publicly available, company-wide child safety or harm reduction performance targets for investors and stakeholders to judge the effectiveness of Meta’s announced tools, policies and actions.”
Meta said in shareholder documents that it had made a series of efforts to protect young users, and that issuing an annual report on the matter would be “unnecessary”.
However, ISS said the company “continues to experience controversies related to child safety” and that “shareholders would benefit from additional information on how the company is managing the risks”.
Glass Lewis said: “We do not believe that the company has provided sufficient disclosure to demonstrate to shareholders that these risks will be managed by the company, nor do we have any reason to be assured that the company will act proactively rather than reactively.”
ISS and Glass Lewis’ recommendations are influential because they often determine how fund managers and other institutional shareholders vote.
Earlier this month the EU opened an investigation into whether Facebook and Instagram have potentially addictive effects on children. The company says it has dozens of tools to make social media safer.
In the UK, the company is facing new online safety laws as well as ongoing opposition to its plans to introduce encryption to Facebook and Instagram’s messaging services.
