Facebook shareholders were sharply critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, faulting the social network company for how it handles "fake news" – and pushing for a fix.
At their annual shareholders meeting, five proposals were offered covering their major gripes, which also included the company's top-heavy structure, The Washington Post reported.
All five were rejected; Zuckerberg controls more than 50 percent of Facebook's shareholder votes, the Post reported.
Investors Arjuna Capital and Baldwin Brothers pushed for a report examining the public policy implications of Facebook's guidelines around fake news, The Washington Post reported.
"To be clear, we are talking about content that is posted and disseminated with the intent to mislead, not the mainstream media, which the president refers to as fake news," Natasha Lamb of Arjuna Capital said, the Post reported.
Facebook needs to take clear action on the issue or risk alienating its audience, she warned.
In Zuckerberg's prepared remarks, he brought up the issue as well.
"Making sure people have access to good information is a really important part of what we care about," Zuckerberg said, CNET reported, adding creating an informed community is "a theme I know a lot of us are thinking about."
The social network last December introduced a way to flag fake stories and partnered with third-party fact checkers to help curb the problem, CNET reported. It also changed its advertising policies to try to make sure content creators did not profit from putting fake articles on the site.
Zuckerberg said Thursday those that spread fake news are mostly "doing it because they're basically spammers who are trying to make money."
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