NEW YORK CITY & FALLS CHURCH, VA - May 20, 2020 – Azzad Asset Management and other investors in Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, have filed a shareholder proposal seeking details on what content the company removes in response to government requests, which will be voted on at the company’s annual meeting on June 3. Shareholders are concerned that content takedown practices between Google and governments threaten the right to freedom of expression and put the company in a position of censoring customers around the globe.
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In addition to Google’s established, regular disclosures of the number and percentage of government requests the company accommodates, shareholders are asking the company’s Board of Directors to consider disclosing more specific data in its transparency report, including: “by jurisdiction, the list of delisted, censored, downgraded, proactively penalized, or blacklisted terms, queries or sites that the company implements in response to government requests.” The proposal was filed by Azzad Asset Management, an investment firm with a commitment to social responsibility, with support from Open MIC.
This request comes as Netflix, the global media streaming company, named nine movies and television shows it has removed around the world due to government requests in its first ever Environmental and Social Governance Report released in early 2020.
Governments around the globe are increasingly using the internet as a tool of social and political control, working to restrict the human right and necessity to access the internet altogether, as well as to control the information available to the general public— all to uphold oppressive and abusive systems of power. Governments cannot suppress content, remove content, block access to content, and control the social and political narrative online without the express participation of tech companies. Shareholders are concerned that tech companies like Alphabet, acting as both a social media platform provider and as the de facto mediator of internet content, are increasingly implicated in governments’ imposition on freedom of expression and access to information.
For example, the U.S. Congressional Vietnam Caucus told Google executives that Vietnam’s 2019 cyber law “is a blatant effort by the Vietnamese government to crackdown on online expression by enlisting the help of leading technology companies—especially Facebook and Google.” In 2019, with alleged support from Alphabet, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist government enforced the longest-ever internet shutdown imposed in a democracy in Kashmir. In January, the government allowed some people access to just a few hundred whitelisted sites. And, as the shareholder proposal notes, Google’s own transparency reports show that last year, the Russian government made 175 separate requests for the company to remove over 160,000 URLs—honoring about 80% of those requests.
Joshua Brockwell, Investment Communications Director, Azzad Asset Management: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The company’s reported conduct appears to run contrary to this mission. A lack of transparency and a willingness to curb freedom of speech and information is a risk to both investors and global citizens alike.”
Michael Connor, Executive Director, Open MIC: “Google itself describes its transparency reports as just ‘a glimpse’ at the content removal requests it receives, calling its own reports ‘not comprehensive.’ Shareholders are rightly concerned that in this gap between ‘comprehensive’ and ‘not comprehensive’, Google is obscuring its participation in an array of human rights violations that reflect an irresponsible and dangerous status quo.”
In addition to requesting disclosure on specific censored terms, the shareholder proposal also suggests the company include in its transparency reports “the substantive content of government requests, including whether the request was met, and criteria used to guide decisions” and the feasibility of the company “notifying customers of content affected by government requests.” Shareholders recognize that the company's censorship concerns include, but are not limited to, how it responds to government requests; for example, Google’s YouTube is currently facing a potential class action lawsuit for censoring LGBTQIA content creators. By expanding disclosure practices on censored or downgraded content in response to government requests, and providing rationale for these decisions, shareholders want Alphabet to establish a stronger, more transparent, and more proactive approach to addressing corporate responsibility as a platform and a de facto content mediator.
View the full shareholder proposal here.
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Michael Connor: (212) 875-9381 or mconnor@openmic.org