Absolutely little has changed with how Zuckerberg has handled his platform since I divested myself of the stock back in June. And even though the shares are up $63 per share since I sold mine, my conscience feels much clearer. Company employees really need to assess their own personal values at this point, and decide if it is worth wasting their talent at this company.
Zuckerberg isn’t going to change; he noted they made “an operational mistake”. This isn’t the first time and won’t be the last because the root problem is Zuckerberg and his executive team. And ordinary shareholders have no say due to the dual class shares and how they were structured (Zuckerberg and insiders maintain a controlling interest of the actual voting shares). Without the ability to hold him more accountable, he can skate by and not have any fear of being removed by the board of directors.
The “operational mistake” is his usual computer algorithm mechanical type of sterile response that is no different than prior mistakes like with the misinformation campaign allowed to proliferate on the platform during the 2016 elections, the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, the 2018 Myanmar genocide propaganda campaign that occurred on the platform, and the more recent controversy about his original stance of allowing non-fact checked political advertising (there are of course many other controversies that I haven’t noted).
Advertisers need to begin putting their money where their mouth is and pullout completely (parent company along with all their subsidiaries) for a longer period (like 6 months and longer). Employees can and should continue to speak out but it’s reached the point that not even staging another walkout, will be enough to effect change. Employees need to seriously start considering walking away from the company. I know that isn’t simple (it’s a job that pays the bills) but any skilled and talented software engineer or analyst, would easily be picked up by other tech firms.
This “operational mistake” caused yet more lives to be actually lost and more are going to be lost with the poor decision making at the executive level.
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