Facebook Has a New Shareholder: PETA

Stock Purchase Made in Response to Increased Video Censorship

For Immediate Release:
July 1, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Today, PETA purchased shares in Facebook, enabling the group to submit a shareholder resolution, attend the company’s annual meetings, and ask questions of executives there. The move comes after the social media platform upped its use of warning screens on PETA videos showing real-life incidents of routine cruelty to animals, significantly limiting the group’s ability to expose animal suffering to a wide audience.

“People deserve to see what animals endure in laboratories, on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, when they’re skinned or plucked alive for clothing, and when they’re beaten so that they’ll perform tricks,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges Facebook to follow Twitter’s lead by allowing users to decide for themselves whether they want to opt in or out of warning covers.”

Sharing eyewitness video footage directly with the public through social media has played a vital role in many of PETA’s victories in behalf of animals—including leading major companies to end appallingly cruel experiments on animals, forcing many circuses that use animals to shut down or stop using wild animals, and persuading hundreds of retailers to ban fur, angora, and mohair.

PETA’s motto reads, “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” The group opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.