With AI-related risks being inherently global in nature, the hope and anticipation is that there will be a suitably robust regulatory environment wherever the technology is deployed, Michael Connor, Executive Director at Open MIC, tells ESG Investor.
“Many companies have global activities, so we need to ensure that if they are applying a higher standard in Europe due to EU regulations, this should be the case wherever they operate to foster greater corporate accountability in the deployment and use of digital technologies,” he says.
“The ad buyers and the big ad agencies are typically behind the scenes, and yet they have an enormous amount of influence on what happens in the media environment, particularly on social media,” said Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, which stands for Open Media and Information Companies Initiative. “They are making recommendations and helping their clients manage billions of dollars in spending, and all too often they escape any kind of scrutiny for what they do.”
Shareholders in Home Depot and the advertising giant Omnicom have filed resolutions asking the companies to investigate whether the money they spent on advertisements may have helped spread hate speech and misinformation.
The resolutions were filed in November but were not made public until Monday. They were coordinated by Open MIC, a nonprofit group that works with shareholders at media and technology companies.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google have banned President Trump and accounts supporting QAnon and the "Stop the Steal" misinformation group while pausing political ads until after President-elect Biden's inauguration — but some interest groups want Omnicom and Home Depot to pressure them to go further…Nonprofit Open Mic led the efforts on behalf of The Nathan Cummings Foundation, which owns shares in Omnicom, and Myra K. Young, who owns shares in Home Depot.
The Open Media and Information Companies Initiative (Open MIC) is helping to lead the charge on two of the first-ever shareholder resolutions asking corporations with large ad budgets to reassess their social media advertising practices. The fear, according to these shareholders, is that the money spent on advertising may inadvertently be funding the spread of white supremacy, disinformation, voter suppression, government censorship, and calls to violence, among other concerns.
“Advertising is the lifeblood of social media,” said Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, a corporate accountability nonprofit that’s coordinating the shareholder actions. “The rampant abuse we’ve seen proliferate on social media is impossible without financial support from some of the biggest brands on the planet. They are in no small part responsible for these abuses, and they have the duty to stop them.”
