Despite Meta’s Slowing Growth, It’s Still Zuckerberg’s Company
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Meta released its first quarter 2022 financial results today. However, despite the company’s slowest revenue growth in a decade and the 25% dive in stock value on Feb. 3, Mark Zuckerberg remains comfortably in control of one of the most powerful companies in the world. Cheyenne Hunt-Majer, J.D., a Public Citizen fellow, released the following statement:
“With Zuckerberg at the helm, Meta (formerly Facebook) has promoted harmful and divisive content, exploited user data on a massive scale, and is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for anticompetitive business practices. Zuckerberg’s response to outraged shareholders has been that these scandals haven’t hurt the company’s bottom line, but that is no longer the case. Meta’s stock price is up in after-hours trading as Meta roughly matched Wall Street’s expectations – but it is 41% below where it was four months ago. The company’s failure to rebound from February’s massive stock dive is yet another in a series of negative referenda on his leadership.
“Facebook’s shareholders attempted to hold him accountable for his mismanagement in 2019, when 68% voted to strip Zuckerberg of his role as board chair, but the company’s dual class stock structure allowed him to veto the measure. Zuckerberg, like many tech CEOs, relies upon a dual class stock structure to avoid consequences for mismanagement and misconduct. It gives him more voting power than ordinary shareholders, which he uses to insulate himself from accountability and reform. It’s long past time for Congress and financial regulators to ban dual class stock structures for bad actors.”