Facebook Has a New Shareholder: PETA

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We thought this news was noteworthy not only because, whatever one may think of PETA, the animal cause deserves attention and support and its messages cannot and should not be throttled to the convenience of animal exploiters. PETA's new strategy (which may probably end up being tested in courts) is one of the ways in which organisations representing "improper speech" according to the rules enforced by the custodians of the present corporate order can push back against outright bans of their right to use mass communications platforms like Facebook, which in any case should be treated as public utilities.

Stock Purchase Made in Response to Increased Video Censorship

Menlo Park, Calif. – 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.

This essay is part of a series on cultural, scientific and esoteric matters.