Meta Unable 'to Manage Its Problems Here Now in the World', Investors’ Report Says

© AFP 2023 / CHRIS DELMASIn this illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on October 28, 2021, a person watches on a smartphone Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveil the META logo
In this illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on October 28, 2021, a person watches on a smartphone Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveil the META logo - Sputnik International, 1920, 11.04.2022
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In February, Mark Zuckerberg's net worth sank $29.7 billion in a single day after Meta stock nosedived earlier that month. The first-ever decline in active users came after the company announced that it would be investing $10 billion in its new Metaverse.
A group of shareholders has accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of failing to tackle the firm's stock tumbling 34% earlier this year as they plan to push for checks on his power, the New York Post (NYP) has reported.
According to the NYP, the angry individuals plan to present two resolutions at the social networking giant's upcoming shareholder meeting to conduct oversight of Facebook*, Instagram, and the potential "dystopian downsides" of Zuckerberg's metaverse project.
The investors' efforts are led by Christina O'Connell, shareholder engagement adviser of the corporate accountability group SumOfUs. The shareholder gathering is scheduled for May.
As for the resolutions, the first document stipulates an outside assessment of Meta's Audit and Risk Oversight Committee, a board the company created in 2020 that is supposedly independent from Zuckerberg and makes decisions about content moderation issues such as former President Donald Trump's ban from Facebook and Instagram.
O'Connell told the NYP that "there's a real concern that given the amount of problems we've seen with the company, that the committee is not managing the company's behaviour and performance very well".
She added that her group "would like to see an independent analysis of how that committee is functioning".
The second resolution reportedly voices concern over "potential psychological and civil and human rights harms" related to Zuckerberg's metaverse drive.

"Meta has been unable to manage its problems here now in the world where we're all living, so it's pretty shocking that they want to move into a more complex platform such as the metaverse. Harms to children, harassment, hate speech — that all becomes amplified when you start moving into the metaverse", O'Connell stated.

The SumOfUs adviser explained that even if the shareholder resolutions don't win a majority, the documents "do have influence in the board and in management and also notify the broader public that shareholders are worried about what's going on".

"We want to see real corporate governance. We want to see competent management of this company", O'Connell stressed.

A Meta spokesperson reacted by stressing that the company values the views of its investors and "regularly engages with them to get their perspective". They added that Meta looks forward to continuing the dialogue, including at its annual shareholder meeting this May.
The remarks come as SumOfUs considers sending a report to more than 4,000 institutional investors with stakes in the company, including Vanguard, Fidelity, and BlackRock.
The report obtained by the NYP mentions at least three crises "engulfing" Zuckerberg's company. These include Google's and Apple's privacy restrictions that have damaged Meta's advertising business, the storm of antitrust lawsuits and bills targeting Meta and other large tech firms, as well as allegations that Zuckerberg has lied to investors and lawmakers about Instagram's harmful effects on teens.
The SumOfUs blames these crises squarely on Zuckerberg, accusing him of failing to prove that his recent embrace of the metaverse is anything more than a "rushed attempt to divert attention from fundamental issues with Meta's core business".
This comes after Zuckerberg blamed the growing popularity of the Chinese-made platform TikTok for Meta's declining user numbers, saying "people have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly".
Among other reasons, Zuckerberg singled out the poor revenue forecast for the next quarter of 2022, noting that the company should focus on developing services for short videos like Reels on Instagram.
For the first time in its 18-year existence, Facebook recorded a drop in the daily number of active users in early February, with the company's shares falling by 25 percent in one day.
*Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is banned in Russia over extremist activities.
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