Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Pressurized to Step Down

Guwahati: In a recent row created against the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the investors of the social media platform are demanding for a resignation from the Chairman cum CEO of Facebook. The investors are of the opinion that the recent act of hiring a Republican-owned political consulting and PR firm has enraged the investors as the PR firm is doing all the wrong thing to its competitors.

As reported to the media by the investors, the social network hired a Republican-owned political consulting and PR firm that “dug up dirt on its competitors”. One of the significant stakeholders with Facebook, Jonas Kron, Senior Vice President at Trillium Asset Management said that he “called on Zuckerberg to step down as board chairman in the wake of the report”.

Kron added, “Facebook is behaving like it’s a special snowflake. It’s not. It is a company and companies need to have a separation of chair and CEO.”

As reported by a leading daily, the PR firm that Facebook hired is Definers Public Affairs, based in Washington, DC. The firm was responsible for conducting PR work for the social networking giant. When being asked about the issue, Zuckerberg denied having any prior knowledge about this firm. He said, “After reading the article, I got on the phone with our team and we are no longer working with this firm.”

Natasha Lamb, another Facebook investor from Arjuna Capital is of the opinion that by the combined role of chairman and chief executive, “Facebook can avoid properly fixing problems inside the company.”

Just like Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg too denies of having any knowledge of the firm. They rather said that Facebook used the consultant Definers Public Affairs to look into the funding of “Freedom from Facebook” in order to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign. The company also added that it was done “To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue.”

Before this, another allegation that made on Facebook of having knowledge about Russian activity, it had denied the news and refuted the allegations.

Also read: Independent Body to Moderate Content at Facebook