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Facebook shareholders vote to overthrow Zuckerberg (it doesn’t work)

Facebook shareholders vote to overthrow Zuckerberg (it doesn’t work)
Jacob Yothment

Jacob Yothment

  • Updated:

Nearly 70% of Facebook’s shareholders voted to reduce Mark Zuckerberg’s power in the company. This was revealed in a recent filing from Facebook from their shareholder meeting.

Zuckerberg

Last year, 51% of shareholders voted for an identical proposal. This year, even more Facebook stock owners are tired of how Zuckerberg has been conducting business.

Shareholders are upset with Zuckerberg over several major Facebook scandals. If you’re wondering what scandals they’re referring to, we can name a couple:

What do the shareholders want to do?

Shareholders are hoping to hire an independent chairman to hold Zuckerberg and his top team accountable.

Essentially, the shareholders are tired of Zuckerberg and his team not being held accountable. Hiring a chairman could put forward a set of checks and balances that would keep them from causing more harm to Facebook and its users.

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Is anything going to come from this?

No.

The issue with hiring a chairman to oversee Zuckerberg is that he owns 60% of the company’s voting power. Zuckerberg and his team voted against hiring an independent chairman, so it’s not happening. Basically, no matter what the majority of shareholders propose, Zuckerberg always gets the final word.

This goes to show the importance of a chairman. Despite Zuckerberg’s majority voting power, a chairman could potentially approve or disapprove decisions made by Zuckerberg and his team. This would provide a new layer of accountability sorely needed at Facebook.

Should Zuckerberg not have as much power?

If you keep up to date with Facebook news, you’d know that there seems to be a new story about a Facebook scandal every week. Although Facebook will make a claim from time to time that they’re trying to make a change, the constant scandals speak for themselves.

To make matters worse, some scandals involved Zuckerberg’s direct actions.

Although Zuckerberg might be the founder of Facebook, his actions might continue to put the company in peril. If Facebook wants to outweigh the negative news with positive news, then they are going to need to make changes like these.

Jacob Yothment

Jacob Yothment

Jacob Yothment is the assistant content editor for Softonic. He's worked in journalism since high school, and has been a fan of all things technology and video games his entire life. He is a 2016 graduate of Purdue University Northwest.

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