Shareholders of Google parent Alphabet Inc. are asking the search giant to take more steps to protect user privacy over reproductive rights and disclose more about its algorithms.
Alphabet
GOOGL,
GOOG,
said shareholders should vote against those proposals, which were listed Friday in a proxy filing for the company’s annual shareholder meeting on June 2. The board argued in the filing that Alphabet already had strong privacy controls and disclosure policies surrounding its advertising and search practices.
Arjuna Capital, on behalf of Elizabeth Bartle, plans to submit for consideration the proposal on reproductive rights at the meeting. That proposal argued that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Google left users seeking information on abortion or other reproductive-health services vulnerable to tracking by law enforcement, as more states race to ban abortion.
“As one of the nation’s largest technology companies, these developments could have a significant impact on Alphabet’s subsidiary, Google, which has been described by tech watchdogs as ‘the cornerstone of American policing’ with respect to government digital data requests,” the proposal said.
“Law enforcement data demands may seek evidence of consumer acts concerning their reproductive health that were legal in the state where they occurred, but illegal in the consumer’s state of residence,” the proposal continued. “Although Google pledged to protect abortion-related data, research shows that the Company still retains location search query by default and location history data for certain users.”
See also: Google CEO Sundar Pichai receives third $200 million-plus stock award
The proposal requested that Alphabet’s board release a public report “assessing the feasibility of reducing the risks of abortion-related law enforcement requests” by broadening privacy safeguards over personal data.
In its response that asked investors to vote against the proposal, Alphabet board wrote, “We advocate for limits on government access to user data to support a consistent and transparent approach across our industry and actively engage with key stakeholders, including civil liberties, civil rights, and reproductive healthcare groups.” They also noted that “Google also specifically asks U.S. state law-enforcement officials to attest that their requests for user data do not pertain to certain abortion-related investigations,” in accordance with California law.
Trillium Asset Management, on behalf of the John Hancock ESG Large Cap Core Fund, and others said in the filing that they planned to submit the proposal surrounding algorithm disclosures.
That proposal, they said, followed efforts by lawmakers, regulators and academics to “understand how algorithmic systems can lead to discriminatory and other harmful outcomes in education, labor, medicine, criminal justice, and online platforms.” They also cited a report from the Markup that found that ‘Google Ads “blocks advertisers from using 83.9 percent of social and racial justice terms.’”
“White supremacist and anti-Muslim ideologies have appeared on YouTube and can lead to offline violence; for example, the New Zealand Royal Commission found that content on YouTube radicalized the man who massacred 51 people at Christchurch mosques in 2019,” that proposal continued.
They asked Alphabet to “go above and beyond” the detail it already provides on its algorithms.
“Exact disclosures are within management’s discretion, but suggestions include, how Alphabet uses algorithmic systems to target and deliver ads, error rates, and the impact these systems had on user speech and experiences,” the proposal said.
“Given our existing policies and disclosures regarding our technologies, the industry-leading quality of the algorithms used by our various services, the multi-framework approach to our transparency efforts, and the potential harm to our services risked by disclosing further information about our algorithms, our Board believes the additional information requested by this proposal would not provide substantial value to our stockholders,” Alphabet’s board wrote in response.
Shares of Alphabet were up 0.2% after hours on Friday.
Also read: Google puts 80-acre megacampus on hold
