We projected “Fire Mark Zuckerberg” onto the side of the Facebook shareholders meeting last night

Facebook’s endless privacy scandals and breaches of trust have reached a boiling point. This year, more than any other before, there are growing and serious calls for a complete change in leadership at the company.

Last night we projected “Fire Zuckerberg” onto Hotel Nia in Palo Alto, where Facebook is holding its annual shareholder’s meeting this morning. Once a year, shareholders gather to voice their concerns with Facebook’s policies and ask questions of its leaders. Its board is supposed to address these issues and steer the company in the right direction.

The sad reality is this ritual is a sham: There is only one decision maker who has control over everything Facebook does, and that’s Mark Zuckerberg. As the CEO and board chair, Zuckerberg on his own decides everything done at the company. He alone has 58% of the voting shares at Facebook, so no matter what other shareholders or board members think, it’s his decision that stays.

The action comes on the heels of Fight for the Future’s campaign calling on the internet to demand the firing of Zuckerberg from his top post at Facebook. The open letter launched at FireMarkZuckerberg.com has thousands of signatures. In an op-ed published in The Guardian, we argued that Zuckerberg personally, and the ruling caste at Facebook generally, has shown no appetite for real reform — despite what they say on TV or in front of Congress.

Facebook has violated billions of people’s basic rights, harvested and abused our data in nauseating ways, and shown reckless disregard for the human impact of its products. Zuckerberg has been the sole leader of Facebook for its entire 15 years of existence. In that time, there has been no attempt to move away from a business model reliant on violating user privacy. Facebook’s current business practices are fundamentally at odds with democracy and human rights.

There is no single silver bullet solution that will “fix” Facebook. But we can start by sending a clear message to its shareholders, corporate leadership, & the entire tech industry that we are fed up, and that no one should be immune from facing the consequences of their actions. Ousting Mark Zuckerberg is an important first step toward affecting real change.

Join us in calling for Zuckerberg to step down by signing this petition.