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Vote your Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google) shares before it's too late [1]

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Date: 2023-05-17

Meta letter to shareholders

I consider being able to vote on company issues to be one of the reasons to hold individual stocks instead of mutual funds or other approaches to investing. It seems like the various institutional stock holders aren't very good at voting their shares, judging by how over-compensated corporate executives and boards are nowadays, and what poor citizens most corporations are. In general, when I don't have the time to sort out how to vote on one of the directors or proposals, I vote against the board recommendation or abstain, since the board will vote all the shares that don't submit proxies according to their recommendations. At times, I think it's worthwhile to hold stock in companies I dislike, to be able to influence change from the inside.

I'll discuss how I voted, and invite you to comment!

The Meta (parent company of Facebook) annual meeting of shareholders will be on May 31. Shareholder Proposal 4 looks like a key one to me. It requests that the board work towards a one vote per share system. Mark Zuckerberg owns 13% of the economic interest of the company, but his shares get 58% of the voting power, which allows him to steer the company to favor right wing disinformation and troll bots. Shareholder Proposals 6, 10, and 12 address various harmful right wing activities of the company. I recommend voting in favor of proposals 4, 6, 10, and 12.

The Alphabet (parent company of Google and YouTube) annual meeting of Shareholders will be on June 2. CEO Sundar Pichai received and eye-popping $226M in compensation in 2022, so clearly the vote on Proposal 4, approval of compensation for executives, is NO! Proposal 8 addresses climate change, and Alphabet's support of climate denial organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce. Proposal 13 addresses the fact that YouTube is perhaps the world's largest disseminator of conspiracy theories, propaganda, and fake news. Proposal 18 addresses the one vote per share issue for Alphabet. Currently, Page and Brin control over 51% of the voting power but own less than 12% of the stock. In summary, I suggest voting no on proposal 4, and yes on 8, 13, and 18.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/17/2169978/-Vote-your-Meta-Facebook-and-Alphabet-Google-shares-before-it-s-too-late

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