Facebook recently held its annual shareholder meeting, which was all virtual, but there were the usual big-wigs in attendance. The infamous founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was there, as was Nick Clegg Facebook’s Chief of Global Policy Communications, and Facebook Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams.

CFACT was in attendance as part of its new strategy to use shareholder meetings and access to stop corporations from pushing Leftist agendas.

Facebook shareholders large and small sat in the ‘audience’ and listened to Zuckerberg as he talked about the AI innovations and investments, while Ms. Williams made remarks highlighting Facebook’s diversity goals over the upcoming years.

Yet what was conveniently not addressed was the issue of online censorship. 

However, once the question-and-answer period began and the shareholders got to ask questions of the board, it became clear that Facebook was in for a free speech reckoning from shareholders.

CFACT submitted a question as well on the issue of Facebook’s biased censorship against those who question climate alarmism. It was as follows:

In July of 2020, Facebook labeled posts from Michael Shellenberger on the issue of climate change as false or misleading, citing information from a group called “Climate Feedback,” which has a strong political bias towards the left of center. Mr. Shellenberger, however, is highly qualified to speak on such matters, as he was invited to serve as an independent Expert Reviewer of the 2019 Next Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What steps is Facebook taking to ensure such blatant, ideologically biased actions are not repeated?

As is to be expected, most questions were directed away from Zuckerberg and towards the other Board Members. Instead, most were directed to Nick Clegg, a former British prime minister who joined Facebook after his service in government.

Clegg, also a successful lawyer in the U.K., insisted several times that Facebook “absolutely does not censor accounts based on political belief.” However, they mentioned several times that they were going to censor beliefs going forward on perceived “humanitarian” grounds. This included things such as human trafficking and various other egregious international crime.

While all should be in favor of fighting such terrible crimes, what was eerie was that they then broadened “humanitarian grounds” out to mean things such as disinformation, sedition, climate “denialism,” vaccine questions…you name it. These are all very broad categories that Facebook has used in the past to target anyone to the right of center.

The Board was clearly caught off-guard by the sheer volume of questions regarding the censorship issue, and that was reflected by how they essentially used Nick Clegg as a human shield.

It was “Protect Zuckerberg at all costs.”

Regardless of what they said in their reports to shareholders, they could not have left that meeting feeling like the spotlight wasn’t on them for their refusal to stop censorship of conservative viewpoints.

CFACT will continue to attend such meetings to be a voice for free speech and oppose online censorship on Facebook and beyond.