Shareholders of Meta Platforms Inc. have voted against an inquiry into allegations of hate speech dissemination and concerns about content moderation in India at their annual general meeting on May 31.
At the meeting which was attended by Founder Mark Zuckerberg, senior executives and nine members of Meta's board, among others, shareholders of the company voted against Proposal 7, which was titled 'Assessing Allegations of Biased Operations in Meta's Largest Market' as a voting matter.
The proposal was put forth by Eko, a non-profit advocacy that campaigns to hold corporations accountable on social issues. The details of the vote were tweeted by the Internet Freedom Foundation, which has been campaigning alongside Eko to raise awareness on Proposal 7 in India.
Voting on Proposal 7 took place a few minutes ago. Unfortunately, as per the preliminary voting outcomes, the vote was not in favour of Proposal 7. This is a loss for Indian users of @Meta's platforms, but our fight for transparency & accountability from Meta does not end here.
The proposal had sought for a "nonpartisan assessment of allegations of political entanglement and content management biases in Meta's operations in India, focusing on how the platform has been utilized to foment ethnic and religious conflict and hatred".
It had asked for a review of Meta's alleged use in the Delhi riots of 2020, among several other issues, including the alleged political bias of former Facebook employee Ankhi Das and current Meta India Public Policy Head Shivnath Thukral.
"Further, content moderation in India is undercut by poor capacity of Meta's “misinformation classifiers” (algorithms) and its human moderators to recognize many of India's 22 officially recognized languages," the proposal had said.
To be clear, Meta's board had already recommended shareholders to vote against the proposal, citing that the company already has been undertaking efforts to address these.
"The requested report is unnecessary and would not provide additional benefit to our shareholders," it had said in a proxy statement prior to the AGM.
Essential Business Intelligence, Continuous LIVE TV, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
