Following the Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting, it has been announced that the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel will remain on the company’s board. This decision was taken after a vote that took place on Monday.
This news is big because for quite some time now, Thiel was under scrutiny for allegations that he has been funding lawsuits against online news company Gawker Media, secretly. However, he received backing from Mark Zuckerberg, who has the majority voting control at the social media company. Forbes was the first to report on his connection with the case where Hulk Hogan has sued Gawker and won the case after the company has published a sex tape featuring him and his friend’s wife.
Zuckerberg didn’t actively address the re-election for the board member after the shareholders didn’t make any move to question his involvement in the battle with Gawker in a 30-minute question-and-answer session.
This decision by Facebook is not surprising, however, it comes at an uneasy time for the company as it has been trying to convince various news organizations that it is credible enough to be a source of distributing information. Critics of Thiel also commented on this by saying that this could increase the difficulties faced by the social media platform.
When asked to comment in a previous interview, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company would not remove Thiel, saying that he did “what he did on his own, not as a Facebook board member.”
Despite all this, several groups have already called Facebook for the removal of Thiel. Earlier this month, the eastern chapter of the Writers Guild of America filed a petition, which said, “A person committed to silencing journalism he doesn’t like should not sit on the board of a company that serves as the portal to digital news for tens of millions of people.”
Photo Credits: Bloomberg
