Mark Zuckerberg will Remain Facebook CEO, no Matter How Many Sign Daily Kos' Sincere but Flawed "Petition"

A little late by 4 days, since it was May 14, but best wishes anyway!

I do not agree whatsoever with the idea that Mark Zuckerberg should be removed as CEO of Facebook. In the real world, it doesn't work that way at all, especially with Founders of corporations, unless they get into some serious legal problems, like felonies, or into something so distasteful that thousands of clients would end their contracts, like Harvey Weinstein.

I just got an email from Daily Kos to this effect, to remove Zuckerberg as CEO. I often wonder whether the flurry of Kos petitions (or for that matter, any of the others I am asked to sign ten times a day, are not just ploys to get your involvement so that such involvement statistically might lead to your eventual financial contribution). I also know that Daily Kos editors NEVER write back when you bring up something in particular or even if you write to Kos, the founder, himself. Remember too how odd it is for such an ostensibly progressive journalistic forum like Kos to consistently dump on refreshing progressive leaders like Tulsi Gabbard. I do think their barrage of articles on a daily basis are refreshing and also unique: they often bring up vital, pressing, and compelling subjects that no one else is talking about at all...

I will quote their "logic" (if you can call it that) verbatim in the remainder of this article~~~and at times, it seems more like "demonizing" or "vilifying"~~~ but keep in mind that while some points may be accurate and perhaps even partially valid, any check with any corporate lawyer would immediately reveal that such an idea, a petition to remove a corporate founder anywhere (especially this one!) is generally specious and doomed to failure, either in corporate board rooms or in particular, THIS corporate boardroom down on 1 Hacker Way, San Mateo, California, and even less likely in any court of law from local to Federal. It is possible that Kos' point of view might prevail, but there is one chance in 1000 for that to occur.

I have no problem with FB airing the entire NZ massacre, even if it was by accident, because such horror needs to be very very visible. I can't speak to the rise of Nazism in Germany, because I just don't know about it. I think there are lots of fixable flaws with Facebook, and maybe something as profound as the US Senate again questioning Zuckerberg would jolt him and board to further action, but I do think they are trying, maybe not hard enough, but trying none-the-less.

I am not fond of some traits of Facebook that start with supreme indifference to the users needs, requests, or questions, but stop to think about a company with 2.38 billion users~~~~just how accessible could it be without becoming dysfunctional or failing altogether? I use FB a lot to stay in touch with friends and to make new friends, to share music and film and ideas, and to send out my one voluminous OpEdNews articles on all kinds of subjects. I do think for related reasons, its contributions to American politics have been excellent, because of the genius aspect of Facebook sharing, which is all entirely VOLUNTARY. I am sure that most of the outrageous white supremacist stuff they bring up should be banned, and banned permanently.

I don't think the Russian ads had any demonstrable effect on the US elections. I was an admin for a big group that I started, Bernie Sanders Advice and Strategies to Win in 2020, and I just deleted the bullshit posts as I became more suspicious about their origin, which I surmised to be a basement at KGB/GRU headquarters in Moscow, which in fact turned out to be the Troll Factory in a whole building in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's hometown.

The biggest recent gripe I have with FB concerns what occurred a few months ago when they removed a whole bunch of groups and pages that had focused on police brutality, the largest of which was the Free Thought Project. They still have their web page but are off of Facebook.

What do I like least about Facebook? Definitely, that would be the penchant for the Facebook system to object to entirely unspecified and never clear problematic material, with no rhyme nor reason, and put the poster into "Facebook Jail." It happened to me far too many times during Bernie's campaign with Bernie related material, and it went on long after Bernie's campaign, despite numerous requests for clarification as to the criteria involved, even directed to the top executives.

Such problems are part of the deal, I suppose, and don't warrant removing the CEO in some kind of Tantrum in the Boardroom!

I could go on and on, and I don't want to mince words solely in order to keep this commentary brief; it is just that this a vast subject, and I can only begin to cogently comment here.

But here nonetheless is Kos' spiel:

Whether it's allowing live video of the white supremacist massacre at Christchurch mosques in New Zealand, excluding Black and Latinx users from seeing housing and employment advertisements, or enabling the spread of Nazi imagery in Germany, Facebook has been at the center of some of our worst moments.

Each time, the company made promises to fix its broken policies. However, despite its promises, Facebook has repeatedly failed to adequately tackle misinformation, discrimination, violent movements, and data breaches that put vulnerable communities at risk.

A large part of the problem is the dangerous concentration of corporate power that allows Facebook to operate on the whims of a single person, namely Mark Zuckerberg.

Daily Kos has teamed up with Color of Change and Majority Action to demand BlackRock - one of Facebook's largest outside shareholders - to withhold support for the nomination of Mark Zuckerberg to the board of directors. Add your name: Tell Facebook shareholder BlackRock to vote NO on Mark Zuckerberg.

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