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Facebook investors have called on CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Shareholders of the American states of Illinois, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New York, as well as Trillium Asset Management, want the position to become independent, says ITPro.

“Facebook plays a major role in our community and our economy,” said Scott Stringer, Controller of New York City. “They have a social and financial responsibility to be transparent, which is why we demand that the board of directors be independent and accountable.

According to Stringer, the board of directors must make a “serious promise” to tackle real risks. “An independent president is essential to keep Facebook going after this mess and to regain the confidence of Americans and investors.”

The appeal is particularly symbolic, as Zuckerberg has the majority of votes. This means that the proposal will probably not be approved because the CEO does not agree.

Problems

With this ‘mess’, Stringer is referring to the series of scandals surrounding Facebook this year. That started with Cambridge Analytica in March, when it turned out that the company had collected data from millions of users without their consent. The information was used to influence online political campaigns.

Following the announcement of the scandal, Zuckerberg had to appear before Congress, where the data privacy policy was criticised by the public. Facebook was forced to change its data collection policy. Access for third parties was limited.

It was also recently announced that 30 million Facebook accounts had been hacked because hackers were stealing access tokens. The hackers provided themselves with access to the personal data of 29 million accounts. The name and contact information – including telephone numbers and e-mail addresses – of 15 million users was stolen. The hackers also sampled other information from 14 million users, including the usernames, gender and location of the accounts.

The hack was the result of three separate errors, which together resulted in a vulnerability to be abused. The vulnerability was present for more than a year, before the employees of Facebook discovered it.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.