‘Fire Zuck’ projected onto location of Facebook shareholders’ meeting

They say visualizing your goal is the first step toward making it a reality. 

The nonprofit Fight for the Future leaned into that belief hard on Wednesday night with a giant projection calling for the firing of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Oh yeah, and it projected said message onto the side of the hotel hosting today’s 11 a.m. Facebook shareholders’ meeting. 

“There is no single silver bullet solution that will ‘fix’ Facebook,” the group wrote in a Medium post documenting the protest. “But we can start by sending a clear message to its shareholders, corporate leadership, & the entire tech industry that we are fed up, and that no one should be immune from facing the consequences of their actions.” 

The outside call to fire the CEO comes on the heels of an April proposal by Facebook investors to oust Zuckerberg. Similar discontent with the CEO was shown by investors at the 2018 shareholders’ meeting. In other words, this call for charge at Facebook’s top isn’t new — although it perhaps gets more urgent with each passing scandal. 

According to a Fight for the Future spokesperson, the projection was up on the side of the Hotel Nia in Palo Alto from roughly an hour until 10 p.m. last night. “[One passerby] had a FB badge and as soon as he saw the projection put his head down and walked faster,” the spokesperson told us over email. 

At least one other, however, seemed more amenable to the call for change — agreeing with the nonprofit that Facebook treats its contractors poorly. 

“[The] person came out of hotel and told us he worked with FB,” the spokesperson continued. “He thanked us for doing what we were doing and said he agreed with us: ‘It’s actually not that crazy of an idea.'” 

Fight for the Future wasn’t the only group with plans to protest the annual meeting. The consumer group SumOfUs has partnered with the activist group Bend the Arc to attempt to deliver a giant inflatable “angry emoji” to Zuckerberg. 

In a press release announcing their planned protest, the groups insisted this move is about more than spectacle. It plans to present a shareholder resolution calling for the breakup of Facebook. 

“The proposal will be presented to the Facebook board by Arielle Cohen, a 30-year-old Pittsburgh activist who is closely connected to the Tree of Life synagogue where 11 people were murdered in an anti-semitic mass shooting in October 2018,” reads a press release from the groups. “Cohen will deliver a heartfelt speech to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the board highlighting the Jewish community’s trauma and making the case for the need to break up Facebook and appoint an independent chair.”

Notably, Zuckerberg has the majority voting share of Facebook, so it’s unlikely that any proposal calling for his ouster or the company’s fragmentation will be successful. At least, not today. But hey, you never get what you want if you don’t ask for it first. Visualize, visualize, visualize.