Good day, and welcome to Meta's 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. Should there be any technical issues during the meeting, please stand by while we work to correct them and continue with the meeting. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kate Kelly, Vice President and Corporate Secretary. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I am Kate Kelly, Meta's Corporate Secretary. Together with Mark and the rest of Meta's Board of Directors, I want to welcome you to our 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. We value the opportunity today to speak with you about our company and answer your questions. Like last year, we have made arrangements for you to submit questions both in advance of and during today's meeting. It is my privilege to serve as Chair of this annual meeting, which I now call to order. You should all see on the virtual meeting portal the agenda for the meeting. This is the order of items we will be covering today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you of the rules of conduct, which you should see under the meeting materials on the meeting portal. We ask that you please read and follow the procedures.
I am joined today by many members of our Board of Directors, including our Chairman and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, our Lead Independent Director, Ambassador Bob Kimmitt, as well as Peggy Alford, Drew Houston, Nancy Killefer, Hock Tan, and Tracy Travis. We have a number of senior executives present who will participate in the Q&A, including Jennifer Newstead, our Chief Legal Officer, who will act as Chair of this annual meeting in the event of any technical difficulties that prevent me from performing my duties today. In addition, Rhonda Munnerlyn of Ernst & Young LLP, our independent registered public accounting firm, is here, as well as Chris Veaco, who will act as the Inspector of Election for this meeting and who will tabulate the results of the voting.
Before we turn to the formal business of the meeting, we would like to take a moment to recognize Sheryl Sandberg, who is retiring from the board today after more than a decade of dedicated service to the company. On behalf of Mark and the rest of the board, we would like to thank her for her distinguished leadership and invaluable contributions to the company and our shareholders. Sheryl, we wish you all the best in your next chapter. Turning now to the formal business, the proxy statement was properly mailed or made available to all shareholders of record as of April 1, 2024.
I have been advised by the Inspector of Election that the holders of shares representing over 92% of the voting power of our Class A and Class B Common Stock, voting together as a single class, are in attendance or represented by proxy here today, and the requisite quorum for each proposal is therefore present. Accordingly, this meeting is authorized to transact the business set forth in the Proxy Statement. As outlined in the Proxy Statement, we have 14 proposals to consider at this meeting. If you have already voted, you do not need to vote again unless you wish to change your vote. Any shareholder present who has not voted or who wishes to change their vote may vote at this meeting by using the Vote Here button.
I now declare the polls open for voting on the items to be presented at the meeting and note for the record that it is May 29th, 2024, at 10:03 A.M. Pacific Time. You may vote at any time during our discussion of the proposals on the agenda. The polls will close after the last proposal has been presented. The first item of business is to elect our Board of Directors to serve until our next annual meeting. The nominees for director and their biographies are set forth in the proxy statement on pages 14 to 23. All 10 directors will be elected for one-year terms expiring at our 2025 annual meeting. The Board of Directors recommends a vote for the election of each director nominee. The second item of business is to ratify the appointment of the independent auditor.
The Board of Directors, on the recommendation of the Audit and Risk Oversight Committee, has appointed Ernst & Young LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024, and is seeking ratification by the shareholders. The Board of Directors recommends a vote for this proposal as described on Page 47 in the proxy statement. The third item of business is to approve an amendment to our Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation. The Board of Directors recommends a vote for this proposal, as described on Page 48 in the proxy statement. The fourth item of business is to approve an amendment to our 2012 Equity Incentive Plan. The Board of Directors recommends a vote for this proposal, as described on Page 49 in the proxy statement. We will now turn to the shareholder proposals to be presented at this meeting.
Each shareholder proponent will present their proposal. Proponents were given the option to either present live or submit a prerecorded statement. For those presenting live, I will direct the operator to open your line when it is your turn to present your proposal. Please limit your statement to no more than three minutes.... First, for Proposal 5, Madison Krieger will be speaking on behalf of NorthStar Asset Management and the co-filer. Operator, please play Ms. Krieger's recorded statement.
My name is Madison Krieger from NorthStar Asset Management in Boston. On behalf of NorthStar and our co-filer, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, I'm presenting Resolution Number Five, a request that Meta's board take steps to adopt a recapitalization plan for all outstanding stock to have one vote per share. NorthStar has been coming to the shareholder meeting to talk about equal shareholder voting since 2015, and year after year, the vast majority of outside shareholders support our request. It's clear that shareholders want to have a say in the important matters of the companies in which they invest. Many governance experts agree with us, and the SEC calls on shareholders to vote their proxies as the primary way for shareholders to make their views known to company management. Without equal voting rights, shareholders' ability to provide feedback to the board and protect their investment is diminished.
Yet at Meta, ordinary shareholders do not have an equal ability to weigh in on significant matters of corporate policy due to the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg controls the majority of voting shares without owning commensurate economic value of the firm. We believe that multi-class share structures empower the CEO and insiders to appoint a board that primarily serves the CEO and management, not shareholders. We also believe that these fears have been borne out in the recent years of scandal. In its opposition statement, the company asserts that the current unequal voting structure allows it to focus on long-term success. However, the company continues to be fraught by controversies that we believe could have been avoided with proper governance reforms. Year after year, Meta is in the news for its connection to incidents that harm real people, incite violence, and weaken democracies.
Recently, The Guardian investigation found that Meta has, quote, "Allowed its social media platforms to become marketplaces for child predators," unquote. While the company claims to be doing all it can, there is evidence that Meta failed to report and detect the extent of abuses occurring. We believe that not only do these controversies create material reputational risks, but also legal, regulatory, and financial risks that can impact shareholder value. We also believe that this lack of oversight and related unforeseen consequences may continue if shareholders are unable to receive equal voting representation to make their concerns heard. Shareholders, we urge you to vote for proxy item number five, a recapitalization plan for all outstanding stock to have one vote per share. Thank you.
Thank you. The Board's position can be found on Page 81 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 6, Natasha Lamb will be speaking on behalf of Arjuna Capital for the proponent and the co-filers. Operator, please play Ms. Lamb's recorded statement.
Good morning. My name is Natasha Lamb, Managing Partner of Arjuna Capital. I move Proposal 6 along with co-filers Open MIC and Ekō, asking Meta to evaluate the risks posed by misinformation and disinformation generated and disseminated through artificial intelligence, and to report on plans to mitigate these risks. Meta has shown time and again that it struggles to manage its products at the pace it's innovating. For years, we've seen significant proliferation of mis and disinformation through Meta's platforms, and its failure to monitor and govern these risks has contributed to devastating societal harms. From the genocide of thousands of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to widespread disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, we've seen how mis and disinformation is used to destabilize our public institutions, economy, and democracy. But now the stakes are even higher.
Misinformation and disinformation are becoming more believable and easier to produce with generative AI. We've already seen the extreme abuse of generative AI and its dissemination across Meta's platforms, from deepfakes of political candidates spewing hate speech to a deepfake of a Pentagon terrorist attack that sent our stock market plummeting. The rush of generative AI to market has led Meta to overlook many of the risks of its own AI tools. For example, in a recent test, Meta's Llama 2 showed a 48% hallucination rate. Unfortunately, misinformation and disinformation from generative AI could get much worse without the proper guardrails in place. What happens this year, a major election year, if races around the world are manipulated by bad actors generating misinformation and disinformation through Meta's AI products and spewing it across Instagram and Facebook? The consequences could be devastating.
As long-term shareholders, we want Meta to succeed over the long run, which means our company must do what it can today to mitigate the generative AI risks of tomorrow. Not only the risks to society, but to the company itself. Regulatory risk, legal risk, reputational risks are only a few, and while Meta touts its current reporting, we've only seen principles and platitudes. The company has not outlined concrete actions nor provided the accountability mechanisms investors seek. Given the severity of the risks, and because the company carries a poor content governance track record, this proposal helps assure that Meta is allocating resource to effectively identify and mitigate mis and disinformation from generative AI. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 83 of the Proxy Statement. For Proposal 7, Eric Gerber will be speaking on behalf of the Treasurer for the State of Illinois and the trustee of the Bright Start College Savings Trust and the co-filers. Operator, please open Mr. Gerber's line.
Good morning, members of the board and fellow shareholders. My name is Eric Gerber, and I'm here on behalf of the Illinois State Treasurer, Michael Frerichs, who serves as trustee of the Bright Start College Savings Trust. I'm here to present Proposal 7, which our office co-filed alongside Wespath Benefits and Investments and Schroders Investment Management Limited. Earlier during today's meeting, the representatives for Proposal Five outlined the risks investors believe the company takes on by maintaining its dual class stock structure. They also noted that this is not the first time that a proposal like this has been presented, and that each time they've been presented, they've received broad support among independent shareholders. A strong signal that dual class stock structures with no sunset provisions are widely considered a poor facet of corporate governance.
However, precisely because of the dual class stock structure, which grants Mark Zuckerberg 61% of the total voting power to his near 100% ownership of Class B shares, none of those proposals have been heeded. Given the company's refusal to make any changes to this highly unequal voting system, which effectively eliminates the voice of independent shareholders, the next best thing Meta can do is provide additional disclosure on how those independent shareholders vote. Our proposal is not prescriptive as to how Meta should provide this information. However, we note examples set forth by other U.S.-based companies such as the Duluth Trading Company and the Salem Media Group, who both disaggregate vote totals by share class in their 8-K reports as a good start.
We also have no reason to believe that implementing vote disaggregation would be onerous for the company. Finally, our proposal requests that the company provide this added disclosure following the 2025 Annual General Meeting, which should allow ample time for management to implement such changes. The bottom line is simple: If the company is unwilling to phase out or reform its dual class voting structure, it should at least disclose how non-Class B shareholders vote on matters that are important to them. We urge you to vote for Proposal 7. Thank you for your time and your attention.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 86 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 8, Anders Schelde will be speaking on behalf of AkademikerPension for the proponent and the co-filers. Operator, please open Mr. Schelde's line.
Dear fellow shareholders and members of the board of directors. My name is Anders Schelde, and I represent the Danish pension fund, AkademikerPension, and the co-filers of our proposal, Storebrand Asset Management and Amundi Asset Management and Ekō. I'm pleased to move Shareholder Proposal Eight. Our proposal calls on Meta to address significant and an urgent issue, content moderation on Facebook and Instagram, specifically in the five largest non-U.S. markets. The proposal requires that Meta report to shareholders on the effectiveness of its measures to prevent and mitigate human rights risks related to hate speech, disinformation, and incitement to violence on Instagram and Facebook. This report should focus on Meta's five largest non-U.S. markets by user number and be published by June 1, 2025. Why is this important?
The proliferation of hate speech, disinformation, and incitement to violence on social media platforms is a severe violation of international human rights standards. Unfortunately, Meta's content moderation systems have time and again been failing to detect divisive content, particularly in languages other than English. This failure has led to an increase in harmful content and have repeatedly and increasingly caused major concerns among Meta shareholders and the general public. This issue is particularly pressing in the 2024 super election year, with an estimated 2.6 billion people heading to the polls worldwide. While Meta has taken steps to curb the spread of election misinformation in the U.S., similar efforts have not been transparently communicated for non-Western, non-English speaking markets. This is worrisome, not least because these markets are, without effective content moderation, more vulnerable to the spread of harmful content.
As investors, we are very concerned about how this lack of content moderation in major markets such as India and Brazil may impact our investments. Being linked to harmful content will of course have the potential to negatively impact Meta's brand value and advertising revenue. However, the proliferation of hate speech, disinformation, and incitement to violence on social media platforms will also undermine democracy, disrupt economic activities, reduce consumer confidence, and negatively impact market stability in general. As universal owners, we are also exposed to these broader economic and social disruptions, which can undermine the long-term performance of our entire investment portfolios. In closing, we urge our fellow shareholders to support Proposal Eight, and we urge the board to demonstrate leadership so that Meta will not only lead in innovation, but also in ethical practices, protecting the users and upholding human rights globally. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 88 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 9, Sarah Couturier-Tanoh will be speaking on behalf of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education for the proponent. Operator, please open Ms. Couturier-Tanoh's line.
Good morning, fellow shareholders. My name is Sarah Couturier-Tanoh, Director of Shareholder Advocacy at SHARE, an organization that represents Canadian institutional investors with over CAD 100 billion as an advisory. The proposal filed by SHARE on behalf of the United Church of Canada Pension Plan asks the company to modify its Corporate Governance Guidelines in a way that would give both the chairperson and the lead independent director the ability to include items on the agenda independent of the other. The objective of the proposal is to provide the lead independent director with the authority to set meetings and establish the meeting agenda without the requirement for coordination with the board chair as a means to reinforce the board's independence, considering that the roles of the chair and CEO are not separated.
We believe that balancing more adequately the power of the lead independent director and the chair of the board would strengthen the board's ability to exercise effective oversight over the management. Considering the many challenges the company is facing and will face in the future, this request will help ensure that what needs to be discussed in the boardroom gets discussed. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 90 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 10, Lydia Kuykendal will be speaking on behalf of Mercy Investments and the co-filer. Operator, please open Ms. Kuykendal's line.
Hi, good morning. My name is Lydia Kuykendal. I'm representing Mercy Investment Services as well as our co-filer, NEI Investments. I'm here to move proposal number ten regarding a human rights impact assessment on AI systems driving targeted advertising. Meta's business model relies almost entirely on ads, with nearly 98% of Facebook's global revenue generated from advertising. That amounts to over $130 billion in 2023. These ads deploy algorithmic systems to enable their delivery. These algorithms determine the ads that users see, which enables the exploitation of individuals' vulnerabilities, perpetuating existing and systemic discrimination and marginalization, and can lead to the exclusion of certain groups of people. The risk to investors is already clear and present.
On April 17, 2024, the EU privacy watchdog, the European Data Protection Board, stated that Meta and other very large online platforms should give users an option to use their services for free without targeted advertising. This alone could cause a monumental shift in how consumers interact with ads, and there is action in the United States as well. Just last week, a U.S. House subcommittee advanced the American Privacy Rights Act to be heard before the full committee. Further, the company has been named in a lawsuit on behalf of the victims of the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, specifically calling out the shooter for being radicalized by, quote, "the algorithms driving the social media products he used, which fed him increasingly racist, antisemitic, and violence-inducing content," end quote.
A judge ruled in March of this year that the lawsuit would be allowed to move forward. Additionally, just earlier this week, the families of the victims of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting filed a similar lawsuit with similar allegations, indicating this is a continuing problem. The company's statement of opposition this year includes reference to the salient risk analysis conducted last year. While a useful exercise, Meta included no recommendations for future action and only listed steps that they have already taken. This indicates that Meta considers these risks addressed and that the issues around targeted ads to be no longer of concern. We believe this is a dangerous outlook that will ensure the previously discussed scandals and risks remain alive and well. The nearly unmatched reach and influence of this company requires an equally unmatched commitment to preserving and respecting human rights across all parts of the business model.
That business model relies on a single source of revenue, advertising. Targeted ads, given concerns around the fairness, accountability, and transparency of the underlying systems, have been heavily scrutinized for its adverse impacts on human rights and is targeted for significant regulation. This is a material risk to investors. A robust human rights impact assessment will enable Meta to better identify, address, mitigate, and prevent such adverse human rights impacts that expose the company to regulatory, legal, and financial risks. For these reasons, we ask you to support proposal number 10. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 91 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 11, Frances Haugen will be speaking on behalf of Proxy Impact for the proponents and the co-filers. Operator, please open Ms. Haugen's line.
I am Frances Haugen from Beyond the Screen, and I move proposal number 11, filed by Proxy Impact, the Lisette Cooper Trust, and members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. The proposal asks the board for an annual child safety report that includes quantitative user experience metrics to assess whether Meta is adequately reducing harm to children on its platforms. This reporting is urgently needed. Two weeks ago, the EU began investigating Meta for failing to reduce physical and mental health risks to young users. In the U.S., law enforcement and child safety experts warn that Meta's expanding end-to-end encryption without new safety features will hide millions of incidents of child sexual abuse. Mr.
Zuckerberg, on January 31, 2024, you stood in the Senate hearing room before bereaved parents who lost their children to the harms of social media and said, "I'm sorry for everything you have been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered." Today, we ask that if you meant this apology, commit to releasing metrics that show the world the progress you're making to live up to it. In two years working at Meta, I saw firsthand how Meta executes most effectively when guided by metrics. Metrics drive progress on the priorities that matter and decrease political infighting.... 43 states are accusing Meta of intentionally lying to the public about harms to children from their products. Their legal filings repeatedly detail how which public metrics Meta chooses to report drove trade-offs by employees between profits and the safety and well-being of children.
Today, Meta reports a handful of core business metrics. None cover what children report as their experiences of safety on the platform. To make progress, metrics must need to be expanded to quantify the magnitude of harms to children and whether Meta is exerting effort to drive down those harms. Progress is urgently needed. In 2021, Meta's own data estimated that each day, 100,000 children face sexual harassment on its platforms. Weekly, one in eight girls under the age of 16 reported experiencing unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. Until Meta reports these numbers next to their quarterly profit and loss, these staggering statistics will not improve. Safety is essential to growing and retaining users. Expanding Meta's public metrics captures growth today and in the future and will reassure legislators, advertisers, shareholders, parents, and users that Meta is taking effective action to protect children.
Meta's advancing transparency will change the social media industry by setting the standard for reporting meaningful metrics for your peers. This is your chance to live up to your promise to parents who have already lost so much and build a better and more successful company for all our children, including your own, now and in the future. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 94 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 12, Luke Perlot will be speaking on behalf of the National Legal and Policy Center. Operator, please play Mr. Perlot's recorded statement.
Good morning. Led by Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has grown into a global behemoth that dominates digital communication. Yet this immense power comes with profound responsibilities, particularly towards young users who are most vulnerable to the platform's pitfalls. Despite growing evidence and public concern, there has been a disconcerting lack of decisive action from Mr. Zuckerberg and his team to address the severe risks these platforms pose to children. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a stark warning about the risks social media poses to the mental health of our young ones. These include addiction, exposure to inappropriate content, and a heightened risk of exploitation. Meta's platforms are scientifically optimized to maximize engagement through notifications, likes, and infinite scrolling, which release dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and addiction.
According to the American Psychological Association, these features may not be suitable for adolescents who are more easily addicted. Further, the company's internal researchers have been aware for several years that Instagram may negatively impact the mental health and well-being of young users, particularly females, yet Meta has done nothing. Young users are also at risk of cyberbullying. According to the Pew Research Center, about 46% of young people between the ages of 13 and 17 have been bullied online. The FBI has also warned that there is a growing problem of sextortion, a form of blackmail in which a perpetrator threatens to release explicit images of the victim, who is often underage, unless they acquiesce to certain demands, often for more images, sexual favors, or money.
Moreover, the company has found itself at the center of numerous lawsuits, including allegations that it failed to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material, with Meta Platforms generating 95% of the 29 million CSAM reports received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in just one year. Meta, under Mr. Zuckerberg's stewardship, has been notably slow in implementing effective safeguards. In 2021, he turned down a proposal brought by members of his senior leadership to expand the company's child and safety and well-being team. The company may try to hide behind its existing safeguards all it wants, but clearly they are not working. Meta should consider another option: raising the minimum age to use its platforms. This is the simplest and most obvious way to protect children and adolescents from the aforementioned risks.
Additionally, raising the minimum age would protect Meta from the legal and reputational damage it has already incurred from exposing children to such risks. For these reasons, we encourage our fellow shareholders to vote for Proposal 12.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 98 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 13, Riley McCann will be speaking on behalf of As You Sow for the proponent. Operator, please play Ms. McCann's recorded statement.
Good morning. It is my honor to present item number 13, which urges us to evaluate the risks of political advertising and consider reinstating measures taken in 2020 to combat election misinformation. This proposal highlights the unique and precarious position of our company and urges management to seriously consider actions available to protect our company's reputation and brand image during elections. We request a report on the benefits and drawbacks of two critical actions. firstly, the prohibition of all political advertising, and secondly, the restoration of enhanced actions implemented during the 2020 election cycle to mitigate the amplification of false, harmful, and misleading information. Social media platforms shape public discourse, sway political narratives, and create echo chambers. According to a Pew Research Center survey,...
77% of U.S. adults find it unacceptable for platforms to sell user data for targeting political ads, highlighting growing concerns about privacy, ethical boundaries, and election interference. As a leader of the industry, we cannot idly stand by while our platforms are used to undermine unity and the strength of our nation. Foreign operatives exploit our platforms to sow discord and manipulate public opinion for their gain. The American people have been painfully divided over the last several years as increasingly violent rhetoric and actions are incited by the spread of false information, especially during election seasons. It's essential to recognize the strides we've made in the past, particularly during the 2020 election, where Meta successfully upgraded algorithms and implemented enhanced actions to combat misleading content. However, Meta has dropped many of these prudent measures, raising concerns around the 2024 election.
Proposal 13 calls for the preparation of a publicly available report to assess the impacts of prohibiting all political advertising and reinstating the protective measures taken in 2020. Let us not forget the financial implications at stake. The devaluation experienced by X as legitimate advertisers refuse to be associated with untrustworthy information, serves as a cautionary tale, underscoring the reputational risks associated with lax content moderation. In conclusion, I implore each of you to consider the gravity of Proposal 13 and its implications for Meta's future. Let us seize this opportunity to steer Meta towards a future defined by integrity, transparency, and responsible stewardship into the digital era. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 101 of the proxy statement. For Proposal 14, Simon Doong will be speaking on behalf of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A and the co-filer. Operator, please play Mr. Doong's recorded statement.
Fellow shareholders, my name is Simon Doong, and on behalf of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and Portico Benefit Services, I move item number 14, which encourages our company to disclose its framework for identifying and addressing misalignments between Meta's lobbying and policy influence activities and its 2030 climate goals. While we applaud commitments Meta has made to set net zero ambitions and support for some climate advocacy efforts, the company's existing disclosures and practices fall far short of what this proposal requests for three reasons. One, Meta's lack of support for key climate policies aligned with its own GHG goals and its funding of certain trade associations undermine its commitments and decarbonization strategies. Climate policy research firm InfluenceMap gives Meta's climate policy efforts a C plus and a score of 22 out of 100 for engagement intensity.
That rating indicates that the company is not engaging in the type of positive climate lobbying that would help it meet its climate objectives. Two, the tech sector is already a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions due to energy demands from localized data centers. One study pegs the information and communication technology sector's share of global emissions at 4%, equal to that of the aviation industry. AI, a critical element of Meta's investment strategy moving forward, appears poised to increase that energy demand further. Three, investors are increasingly requesting disclosure on direct and indirect climate lobbying efforts and how those activities align with the company's own climate-related objectives and the goals of the Paris Agreement. Leading companies across sectors from Bayer to Microsoft are publishing reports with significantly improved disclosure standards.
The recent lobbying alignment report from Unilever is the strongest example to date in meeting the objectives of many investors. In contrast, Meta's existing reporting does little to shine light on how it evaluates whether its policy actions are helping it to achieve its decarbonization and energy use strategies. Therefore, the company's current level of disclosure falls short of growing trends across industries and of what this proposal requests. We believe that the requested information would help ensure that Meta's direct and indirect public policy advocacy supports the kinds of policies needed to decarbonize its energy-intensive data centers and accomplish its value chain net zero ambition. We therefore urge you to vote for proposal number 14 on Meta's proxy card. Thank you.
Thank you. The board's position can be found on Page 104 of the proxy statement. The polls will close shortly. If you intend to vote and haven't done so yet, please do so now by casting your vote through the portal by using the Vote Here button. We will have a short pause now for you to cast your final votes.... the meeting. For the record, I note that it is May 29, 2024, and the time is now 10:36 A.M.--10:37 A.M. Pacific Time. While we wait for the vote to come in, and before I turn it over to Mark, I would like to make a required legal statement. Mark's remarks and the Q&A that follow may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company.
We caution you to consider the important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward-looking statements. These risk factors are more fully detailed under the caption Risk Factors in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 25, 2024. In addition, any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. I see that the vote is now in, so we can announce the approximate preliminary results. These totals are preliminary because the vote is subject to final audit by the Inspector of Election, but that will not affect the outcome on any matter. For Proposal One, each nominee for director has received a for vote of at least 81%.
The ratification of the independent auditor was approved with over 98% of the vote in favor. The amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation was approved with over 75% of the outstanding vote in favor. The amendment of our 2012 Equity Incentive Plan was approved with over 72% of the vote in favor. For Proposal Five on dual class stock, approximately 26% of the vote was in favor and 74% was against. For Proposal Six on a report on generative AI, misinformation, and disinformation risks, approximately 17% of the vote was in favor and 83% was against. For Proposal Seven on disclosure of voting results based on class of shares, approximately 17% of the vote was in favor and 83% was against.
For Proposal Eight on a report on human rights risks in non-U.S. markets, approximately 5% of the vote was in favor and 95% was against. For Proposal Nine on an amendment of the Corporate Governance Guidelines, approximately 18% of the vote was in favor and 82% was against. For Proposal Ten on a human rights impact assessment on AI systems driving targeted advertising, approximately 14% of the vote was in favor and 86% was against. For Proposal Eleven on a report on child safety impacts and actual harm reduction to children, approximately 18% of the vote was in favor and 82% was against. For Proposal Twelve on a report and advisory vote on minimum age for social media, less than 1% of the vote was in favor and over 99% was against.
For Proposal 13 on a report on political advertising and election cycle enhanced actions, approximately 3% of the vote was in favor and 97% was against. Lastly, for Proposal 14 on a report on a framework to assess company lobbying alignment with climate goals, approximately 8% of the vote was in favor and 92% was against. Final voting results will be posted on our website and filed with the SEC within four business days. There are no other items of business on the agenda, so this concludes the formal part of our meeting. Thank you all. The annual meeting is adjourned. Now I will turn it over to Mark.
All right, thanks, Kate. Thanks, everyone, for joining today. Before getting into our product strategy and the opportunities ahead, I want to briefly look back on the year since our last shareholder meeting. 2023 was our year of efficiency, where we focused on making Meta a stronger technology company and improving our business to give us the stability to deliver on our ambitious long-term vision. And not only did we achieve our efficiency goals, but we also returned to strong revenue growth, saw strong engagement across our apps, and shipped a number of exciting new products like Threads, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, mixed reality in Quest 3, and established a world-class AI effort. Being a leaner company has helped us execute better and faster, and we've carried these values into 2024 as a permanent part of how we operate.
As a result, we've seen strong product momentum and business performance to start this year. Now, at our last meeting, I talked about how the two major technologies driving our roadmap were AI and the metaverse, and today I'll give an update on both. With AI, our long-term vision is to build general intelligence, open source it responsibly, and make it widely available so that everyone in the world can benefit. On that path, we're building a number of different AI services, from Meta AI to creator AIs that help creators engage with their communities, to business AIs that we think every business on our platform will eventually use to help customers buy things and get customer support, to internal coding and engineering and development AIs, and a lot more.
Last month, we released our new version of Meta AI that is now powered by our latest model, Llama 3. Our goal here is to build the world's leading AI service both in terms of quality and usage. If you're in the U.S. or one of about a dozen other countries that we launched it in, you'll find the Meta AI assistant in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or Facebook, and we're going to be bringing it to more languages and countries soon. In addition to answering more complex queries, Meta AI can now animate still images and generate images, and it can do that so quickly that it actually updates them as you're typing in the prompts. We continue to release best-in-class models to power our products and push the industry forward as a whole.
The eight billion and 70 billion parameter models of Llama 3 set new benchmarks, when we released them last month, and the 400 billion parameter model that we're still training seems on track to be industry-leading on several benchmarks as well. I expect that our models are just going to keep improving going forward from open source contributions. The tech industry has shown over and over that open source leads to better, safer, and more secure products, faster innovation, and a healthier market. So beyond just improving Meta products, we're optimistic that these models can help unlock progress in fields like science, healthcare, and more.
Now, there are several ways to build a massive business here, including scaling business messaging, introducing ads or paid content into AI interactions, and enabling people to pay to use bigger AI models and access more compute. So if the technology and products evolve in the way that we hope, each of those opportunities will unlock massive amounts of value for people and business for us over time. But to be clear, AI is already helping us meaningfully improve engagement and ads ranking. So we're seeing a lot of that upside already. Overall, given the momentum and results we're seeing, I believe that we should invest significantly more over the coming years to build even more advanced models and the largest-scale AI services in the world. And we'll continue focusing on operating the rest of our company efficiently as we do that.
Of course, it's important to do all this thoughtfully because AI brings new challenges. Some of those challenges will look like ones that our integrity teams have built deep experience fighting already, but there are going to be some new issues as well. We're very focused on making sure that these new technologies are beneficial to our lives and that they add to our social interactions. In addition to AI, our other long-term focus is the metaverse, and it's been interesting, especially over the last year, to see how these two themes of AI and the metaverse have come together. This is clearest when you look at the Ray-Ban Meta glasses that we built with EssilorLuxottica.
They're the ideal device for an AI assistant because they can have full context on what's going on around you as they help you with whatever you're trying to do. Our launch last month of Meta AI with Vision on the glasses is a good example where you can now ask questions about things that you're looking at. We've made important progress on our other metaverse work as well, and remain focused on shipping mixed and virtual reality experiences that are accessible to everyone. As the ecosystem grows, we think that there's going to be sufficient diversity in how people want to use mixed reality, that there will be demand for more different designs for headsets than we're going to be able to build.
So we're opening up Meta Horizon OS, the operating system that we've built, to power Quest, so that third-party hardware makers can design headsets as well. I expect our first-party Quest devices to continue to be the most popular headsets, as we see today, and we'll continue focusing on advancing the state-of-the-art, and making it accessible to everyone. But I also think that opening our operating system will help grow the ecosystem even faster. Now, looking to our family of apps, we're seeing good momentum, and good improvements across the board, in part thanks to the AI advance, advances I mentioned earlier. More than 3.2 billion people use at least one of our apps each day, and we're seeing healthy growth in the U.S., including WhatsApp, where the number of daily actives and message sends keeps gaining momentum.
Video remains a bright spot on Facebook and Instagram. We recently launched an updated full-screen video player on Facebook that brings together Reels, longer videos, and live content into a single experience with a unified AI recommendation system. On Instagram, Reels and video continue to drive engagement, with Reels alone now making up 50% of time spent within the app. Threads is going well, too. As of last month, there were more than 150 million monthly actives, and it continues to generally be on the trajectory that we hope to see. We continue to prioritize safety and security as we build all these experiences across our apps, particularly when it comes to youth well-being.
I was in D.C. earlier this year to talk through the more than 50 tools, features, and resources that we've developed over the past decade to help keep teens safe online. These are quite complex issues, but this is a real focus for us, and we'll keep working with experts and listening to parents to develop tools that meet their needs. All right, that's everything I want to cover up front. I'm proud of the progress that we've made, and I'm grateful to our teams that are driving all these advances and of course, to all of you for being on this journey with us. Now I will turn it over to Kate as we answer some questions.
Great. Thanks, Mark. I'd now like to invite Susan Li, our Chief Financial Officer, and Nick Clegg, our President, Global Affairs, to join Mark, Jen, and our independent directors to answer your questions. We want to thank those who have submitted questions in advance and during the meeting, and we'll try to answer as many questions as we can. We will start out with a set of questions that have been submitted in advance via the online meeting site. Our first question was submitted by Brett Y, who writes: "To Mark Zuckerberg, I would like to know how the company, Meta, will be monetizing AI and Llama, and could AI be to Meta what AWS is to Amazon?" Mark, would you like to answer that question, please?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I just went through some of the big opportunities that we see here for building a business around these advanced AI models. And certainly one of them, including, you know, people using Meta AI and either integrating ads into it or paying to access larger models or more compute, has some echoes to what Amazon and Google and Microsoft have done with their compute platforms. But I don't think that that's the only opportunity here, although it is a big one. Another one is expanding business messaging. And what we see today is that a lot of businesses, especially in countries in Southeast Asia, where the cost of labor might be a bit lower, are able to have people today talk to customers and sell a lot of things through WhatsApp and Messenger.
But we think that if we can give every business around the world a business agent that can interact with their customers and do both sales and customer support, then that kind of opportunity will be available to, you know, all of the businesses that use our platforms, and not just ones in countries where the cost of human labor is low enough that it economically makes sense today. So I think that that would be a massive opportunity and is one that we're really focused on. In addition to that, there are just a lot of opportunities to improve make our existing products more interesting, which will lead to people using them more and increase our revenue and business there, and opportunities to improve the way that advertising works.
You know, right now, we already have AI systems that are basically, you know, effective enough at finding the right potential customers for an advertiser that we generally recommend that advertisers don't restrict how we can target ads, because we believe that we can basically, in most cases, deliver better results than the advertiser will be able to find, themselves. But today, advertisers still need to, you know, produce their own creative and images and text. So, you know, I think that we're moving towards a world where advertisers, you know, one day are just gonna give us a business objective, and we'll just be able to go deliver results for them by creating the creative, finding the right customers, putting the messages in front of people, and just end-to-end delivering results.
And I think that that is just a really valuable proposition to a lot of businesses around the world. So, those are a few of the things that we're looking at. You know, we have a long-term plan around this. If only a few of those work out the way that we're thinking that they will, then this investment will end up being a very good return. If they all work out, then it will be an extremely good return. And I think that that's kind of how we're thinking about it.
Great. Thanks, Mark. Our next question comes from John Irfan E: How did Apple Vision Pro affect Meta Quest sales trends? Adoption is looking low. Are there future plans to cut costs from the Reality Labs business? Mark, would you like to answer this one, too, please?
Sure. It's a little bit hard to know how any one effect in the world affects sales. Although, you know, if I had to guess, I would say that the extra interest that has been created by Apple entering the category has probably increased sales, not decreased it, but really hard to know. Our Quest sales are ahead of our forecasts internally, so I feel, you know, pretty good about that. I mean, I always want the ecosystem to grow faster in everything that we do, so that's kind of an important part of it. And we'll continue innovating on that. You know, we've learned a lot from each of the big releases that we've done, Quest 1, Quest 2, Quest 3.
You know, each one added an important kind of foundational technology to it, with the big one with Quest 3 being high-quality, color, mixed reality, where you can blend and put digital objects into... And while you're wearing this, you see the physical world in high-resolution color around you, and you can, you know, whether you're doing work and you wanna see, you know, big screens, or if you're on a plane and you wanna watch a, you know, a movie in kind of a big screen theater or you're playing games and you wanna, you know, have the game show up in your living room rather than being in a fully immersive world. This just unlocks a lot more possibilities.
So, we think that we're still at the early end of developers exploring that capability since it's launched, but I feel pretty good about that. And to your question about efficiency, we're pretty focused on that across the whole company. So it's... You know, I don't think about that as, you know, just Reality Labs, although certainly the Reality Labs team is also focused on that, too. And we'll continue to think about that, especially as we ramp up the costs, and CapEx investments around AI. Making sure that we run the company as efficiently as possible is gonna continue to be important.
Great. Thanks, Mark. We received more than one question on the topic of stock splits, including this one from Maureen C. asking, "I am a very small shareholder, 200 shares, but wish I could afford to buy more stock for my grandchildren's future. Is there any chance Meta will split again, but in a way that its, that its cost lets the average family purchase shares? The cost now makes it impossible except for rich people, and I'm just old and now on Social Security and want to have the chance to buy more for my family. Thank you, and please work to make Meta a safe place for kids." Susan, would you like to take this question, please?
Sure, and thank you to Maureen for the question. We appreciate your support. At this time, we do not have plans to initiate a stock split. Our primary focus still remains on executing against our long-term mission and investing in areas that we believe will drive value for our shareholders, over time. But I would also note that many brokerages now enable people to purchase fractional shares, so individuals can invest the dollar denomination that they would like, regardless of the company's share price. If that is something that might be of interest to you, I would encourage you to contact your brokerage to see if they offer fractional investing and understand any limitations they may have with fractional shares relative to owning whole shares. I also heard your comment about making Meta a safe place for kids.
Nick, would you like to speak to our efforts around child safety?
Yeah, thanks, Susan. And of course, this is a hugely important topic that spans many areas of our work. So I'll just take a little time to outline a few of them. First of all, we want to provide families with the tools, and we've developed many of them, that I think Mark referred to around 50 of them, that help families make sure that their teens use social media safely and in an age-appropriate way. And this includes features that allow parents to decide when and for how long their teens use Instagram, automatically placing teens under 16 into private accounts when they join Instagram, and restricting messages from people they don't follow or aren't already connected with.
The overall goal of this work is to continue to provide teens with safe, age-appropriate experiences online and to develop features like parental supervision that help parents and teens have smart, dialogues about teens' online presence, how they build and maintain relationships, and how they navigate the unique experience of being a teenager online today. And secondly, we have specific policies in place to prohibit harmful content, as well as content or behavior that exploits or seeks to exploit young people. We recently introduced enhanced protections designed to give teens more age-appropriate experiences on our apps and are focused on building features and tools that help people connect online safely and responsibly. For example, in January, we announced that we are starting to hide more types of content for teens on Instagram and Facebook.
While we allow people to share content discussing their own struggles with suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders, our policy is not to recommend this content, and we've been focused on ways to make it harder to find. We already aim not to recommend this type of content to teens in places like Reels and Explore, and with these changes, we will work to no longer show it to teens in Feed and Stories, even if it's shared by someone they follow. Thirdly, we seek to prevent child exploitation through a number of measures, including using sophisticated technology to proactively find and take action on such content. Child exploitation is a horrific crime, and we've spent years building technology to combat it and to support law enforcement, investigating, prosecuting the criminals behind it.
It's an ongoing fight where determined criminals evolve their tactics across platforms to try and evade protections. Between August and December of last year, we disabled more than 2.6 million accounts for violating our child sexual exploitation policies. We published that statistic along with several other stats in January of this year on our newsroom as part of an update on the efficacy of our work enforcing our child safety policies. These include also that we automatically disable accounts if they exhibit a certain number of the 60-plus signals that we monitor for potentially suspicious behavior. We identified and removed more than 90,000 accounts from August 1, 2023, to the end of last year as a result of this method.
Between the same period of time, we took action on over 2.2 million accounts on Facebook and over 1.4 million accounts on Instagram, as they were linked to accounts that violated our child safety policies. We publish Community Standards Enforcement Reports every 12 weeks to track and demonstrate our commitment to online safety and inclusivity. In addition to the extensive work we're doing, it's also becoming clear that parents need and want simpler ways to manage their teen's experience, and legislation in this space, which we advocate for, needs to reflect how parents and teens actually use apps. It's important to note this goes well beyond one company.
We need industry-wide collaboration, and that's why Meta supports legislation that requires app stores to get a parent's approval before their child downloads an app, allowing parents to oversee and approve their teen's online activity in one place. Such legislation should require app stores to verify age and provide apps and developers with this information to help ensure teens are placed in age-appropriate, supervised experiences. And finally, I should note that in January of this year, we announced that we are partnering with the Center for Open Science on a pilot program to share certain privacy-preserving social media data with a select group of academic researchers to study topics related to well-being further. All of this work is, and will continue to be ongoing. Thank you.
Thank you, Susan and Nick. Our next question comes from Ashley N, asking: How do I get my dividend money to reinvest in stock rather than receiving a payout check or deposit? Susan, will you please take this question?
Thank you, Ashley, for the question. We are pleased to have initiated and paid our first quarterly dividend earlier this year. If you hold shares directly through our transfer agent, there's not currently a way to automatically reinvest dividends. However, many brokerage firms will provide you with the ability to automatically reinvest dividends that you receive in your portfolio, so I would encourage you to explore that option if that is of interest.
Great. Thanks, Susan. Our next question is from Ashkar B, who asks: I would like to know what measures Meta has taken to control the unfiltered content. There are groups with anti-national stuff in India. Nick, would you please take this one?
Of course. Thanks for the question. Look, our overall goal is to enable open and authentic communication, and give people a voice, while keeping, of course, our platform safe for everyone. And that's why we developed Facebook's Community Standards and Instagram's Community Guidelines, which define what is and is not allowed on Facebook and Instagram. And we're focused on enforcing these Community Standards to help ensure the safety and security of our platforms. We have around 40,000 people working on safety and security globally, with more than $20 billion invested in teams and technology in this area since 2016. We partner with companies that collectively employ more than 15,000 reviewers, who help review content posted on our platform to determine whether it meets our Community Standards.
Of course, we've also developed tools to manage the risk from misinformation and disinformation on our platforms. We've built one of the largest independent fact-checking networks of any platform in the world, with more than 90 partners around the globe who review and rate viral misinformation in more than 60 languages. I do want to address the part of the question that asks specifically about India, and hopefully it'll be helpful if I share a few statistics. Our content reviewers provide support now in 20 Indian languages. We have 12 independent fact-checkers in India, which is actually the largest number for any country, and they review content in 16 Indian languages, plus English. Governments, of course, can request data in accordance with applicable law and our terms of service.
In India, as part of the domestic legislation, the so-called Information Technology Rules, the government can make requests for content to be reviewed that they feel is locally unlawful. Twice a year, we publicly share a government request for user data report with more information about the requests we've received from governments around the world. In India, as part of the Information Technology Rules, we also publish a monthly report of actions taken against violating content on Facebook and Instagram for content created by users in India through proactive detection mechanisms and information on grievances received from users in India, and orders received from the Grievance Appellate Committee. In addition, we continue to share information about our progress in addressing violating content through our quarterly Community Standards Enforcement Report.
I'd like to finally note that we're also the only company in the industry to have created an external and independent Oversight Board, made up of experts from around the world in free speech, academia, journalism, and other areas, who help us think through difficult content appeal decisions, and they also provide policy recommendations and issue us with binding content decisions as well. Thanks.
Great. Thank you, Nick. Our next question comes from Sam V, who asks: What is the term and compensation for each member of the board of directors? Is it staggered or equal across the board? I'm happy to answer this question. All directors are elected for equal one-year terms. We also have a director compensation policy, which is described on Page 55 of the Proxy Statement. Thank you for the question. I think we have time for one final question today. This question was submitted from Dave D, who asks: Why do we give shares to executives and directors, pay them and allow them to purchase shares at a reduced rate, 75%-85% of the current price, and require them to hold the shares for a specified period of time, depending on the discount?
Giving away shares that are created for such use diminishes the equity and voting power of each shareholder. All shares used for such purposes should be purchased by the company on the open market. Peggy, would you like to take this question, please?
Of course. Thanks, Dave, for the question. So equity has been an important component of our compensation strategy for employees at all levels since Meta's founding. Our equity compensation is issued in the form of restricted stock units, which vest in equal quarterly installments over the course of four years, of course, subject to continued employment. In addition, we have adopted guidelines for minimum share ownership for both executive officers and non-executive directors, and as of the end of the last fiscal year, all executive officers, as well as non-employee directors, either met their applicable ownership threshold or were within the permitted time period to attain ownership. We believe that the use of equity compensation enables us to align the interests of our executives and directors with those of our shareholders in the overall success of our company by emphasizing long-term incentives.
It also enables us to attract top talent in our leadership positions and motivate our executives to deliver the highest level of individual and team impact, as well as results. It encourages our executives to focus on our company priorities. It ensures each of our executives receive a total compensation package that encourages his or her long-term retention, and it rewards high levels of performance with commensurate levels of compensation. We also regularly monitor the dilution as a result of equity compensation, and we have a share repurchase program to reduce such dilution.
Thank you, Peggy. That concludes the Q&A session. Thank you all for attending Meta's 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. We appreciate your participation and value hearing directly from you, our shareholders. We'll see you next year.
The meeting has now concluded. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.