Teachers’ Union Urges Action on Meta’s ‘Clear Threats’ to Kids

(Bloomberg) -- A national teachers' union is urging its members' pension funds to push for an outside review of Meta Platforms Inc.'s governance, saying the potential for its social media services to harm children warrants closer scrutiny of its inner workings.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is seeking support for a proposal to be presented at Meta's May 25 annual shareholder meeting that would compel Facebook's parent to hire an outside law firm to assess its audit committee and risk management. The AFT has 1.7 million members who participate in pension funds that together hold 30 million shares of Meta, valued around $6 billion, according to the union.

“AFT members, whose deferred wages may be invested in Meta, have seen the harms perpetuated by Meta's Facebook platform firsthand,” Weingarten wrote in a letter Wednesday. “Meta has not taken sufficient action to mitigate the clear threats its business management choices pose to children and teenagers.”

She highlighted the impact on members from harmful content, including nurses dealing with illness due to Covid misinformation, and school staff supporting children with depression or self-esteem issues. She also noted the drop in the company's shares -- Meta is down 34% over the past year -- and regulatory risks stemming from concerns about its internal controls.

Weingarten, who heads the U.S.'s second-largest teacher's union, wrote to trustees a day after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appeared at an AFT town hall to discuss social media. In October 2021, Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, shared thousands of pages of internal documents with journalists that suggested Facebook knew about the harms it was causing teenagers but chose to do little in terms of addressing the problems. Huagen accused Meta of prioritizing profit over the safety of the platform's active users.

In its 2022 proxy statement, Meta's board opposed the shareholder proposal. “The audit & risk oversight committee takes its responsibilities, including risk oversight, seriously,” the company wrote. Meta said that “robust efforts already in place” show the committee's “commitment to providing appropriate oversight” and thus the proposal was “unnecessary and not beneficial to our shareholders.”

“Meta's board must take seriously its obligation to police the company's risk management practices and its internal controls,” and “part of that obligation includes addressing Meta's role in harming children and the public at large,” Weingarten wrote. “The proposal makes clear that the failure, so far, to do so requires the involvement of independent outside expertise, much as other kinds of misconduct by corporate insiders would.”

She also singled out Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, saying his role as founder and board chair seems to give him power to prevent the board from fulfilling its responsibility to internally audit the company's management and products, while Meta's dual-class share structure insulates him from public accountability.