The New York Common Retirement Fund Will Vote to Remove the Boards of Twitter and Meta Today
New York Common Retirement filed two letters last week to the Securities and Exchange Commission explaining that they would vote against the boards of Meta and Twitter this proxy season. Both companies are holding their annual meetings today.
The letters report that as of March 31, the retirement fund held approximately $1.1 billion in Meta stock and approximately $34.6 million in Twitter.
In the two letters, State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli writes that both Meta and Twitter had failed to remove the videos, screenshots and manifesto uploaded by Payton Gendron, the prime suspect in the Buffalo mass shooting that took place last week.
Gendron had posted white supremacist content to social media pages, and even elaborated his plans to target and murder Black shoppers at a Buffalo supermarket months before he attacked.
“Allowing this content on social media platforms facilitates the radicalization of individuals through repeated exposure to violent rhetoric, hate speech and examples of previous violence,” argues DiNapoli in both letters to the SEC. “This radicalization has attracted unending scrutiny from regulators around the world and public denouncements that have led to increasing calls for further regulation of social media platforms.”
DiNapoli and the staff at New York Common state that the lack of regulation on these social media platforms will ultimately be costly to investors and plan on voting against both boards at their annual meetings.
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