Target 16.10: Public access to information
Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Telecom operators and platforms are the gatekeepers of information access. A March 2022 Business & Human Rights Resource Center briefing found that African operators state they comply with government shutdown orders, and that only Vodafone and Orange responded to its inquiries. The briefing also found that few operators, Vodafone, Orange and MTN among them, publish human rights policies and transparency reports on shutdowns. Investors have used the vote on the platform side, filing 15 proposals at Alphabet, Amazon and Meta for 2023 on content governance, algorithmic transparency and human rights due diligence. They include a refiled Alphabet algorithmic disclosure proposal that had earned 56 percent support among shareholders other than Brin, Page and Schmidt. Owners can supply a necessary input: transparency reports, human rights due diligence and resistance to unlawful orders. But governments set the laws that restrict or protect freedoms and must also act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Internet Shutdowns in Africa: Addressing the Human Rights Responsibilities of Telecommunication Companies, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2022-03
- Through a Series of Shareholder Proposals at Alphabet, Amazon and Meta Investors Underscore Digital and Human Rights Risks in Tech Sector, Investor Alliance for Human Rights, 2023-01-31
14 campaigns on record
The proposal asked JPMorgan to report on whether its lobbying and public-policy advocacy align with the company's own stated public-policy positions.
Result: A similar proposal received 31.6% support at the 2023 annual meeting; support fell to 13.2% at the 2026 annual meeting.
we found no documented change to JPMorgan's lobbying disclosure practices as a result of these votes.
JPMorgan shareholders reject call for more lobbying disclosures, American Banker
Asked Alphabet to evaluate and report on whether its generative artificial intelligence products treat people differently according to their religion or their political opinions, and on the civil liberties risks that would follow.
Result: Voted on at the annual meeting of 6 June 2025 as Item 10, 'a stockholder proposal regarding a report on risks of discrimination in GenAI'. About 0.46% of the shares voted for and against were in favour (57,074,931 for, 12,419,353,797 against, 39,186,294 abstentions, 619,907,425 broker non-votes). The proposal was not approved. Inspire also filed a notice of exempt solicitation urging a yes vote, signed by about sixty investors and financial professionals.
We found no documented change by Alphabet that any source attributes to this vote.
Form 8-K, results of the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders, Alphabet Inc. via SEC EDGAR
Asked Apple to disclose each year how its corporate charitable contributions affect the risk that the company discriminates against people over their speech or their exercise of religion.
Result: Voted on at the annual meeting of 25 February 2025 as Proposal 7, 'Report on Charitable Giving'. About 1.87% of the shares voted for and against were in favour (169,119,141 for, 8,884,470,350 against, 87,816,017 abstentions, 3,038,264,304 broker non-votes). The proposal was not approved. Three other shareholder proposals were on the same ballot from other proponents, including a request that Apple cease its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which drew 210,451,697 votes in favour.
We found no documented change by Apple that any source attributes to this vote.
Form 8-K, results of the 2025 annual meeting of shareholders, Apple Inc. via SEC EDGAR
Asked Deere to publish a report on its charitable giving, and in particular on how its employee matching gift programme treats religious organisations. Bowyer Research says Deere's rules exclude seminaries, schools of theology, Bible schools and organisations working only for sectarian purposes from matching, which the firm describes as inconsistent treatment of employees of faith.
Result: Precatory proposal filed under Rule 14a-8 and voted on as Proposal 8 at the annual meeting of 26 February 2025. Votes for 2,549,298; votes against 200,450,816; abstentions 2,066,411; broker non-votes 31,663,030. That is 1.26% of the votes cast for and against, or 1.24% if abstentions are counted in the base. The proposal was not approved. Deere's board recommended a vote against it.
We found no documented change to Deere's charitable giving or matching gift rules that any source we retrieved attributes to this proposal.
Asked the company to prepare a report, at reasonable cost and leaving out proprietary or legally privileged information, assessing the risks that come from using data unethically to develop artificial intelligence, the steps it takes to reduce those risks, and how it measures whether those steps work.
Result: Voted on at the December 5, 2025 annual meeting as the proposal for a report on AI data usage oversight. Not approved, but it drew the strongest support of any NLPC proposal in this record: 683,895,858 votes for, 4,435,809,588 against, 63,749,211 abstaining, and 1,137,975,835 broker non-votes. Microsoft reported this as 13.36% support, which is the share of votes for and against.
we found no documented change
A general call to the technology industry and to investors, issued in response to the backsliding documented for the 14 companies scored in Ranking Digital Rights' 2025 Big Tech Index.
With Church of England Pensions Board, Council on Ethics for the Swedish National Pension (AP) Funds, SHARE (Shareholder Association for Research and Education), World Benchmarking Alliance
Result: This was a public statement rather than a shareholder vote, so there is no vote result to report.
We found no documented company response or policy change resulting from this statement in the source reviewed.
Asked the company to report on whether its public commitments on privacy and human rights match what it actually does, particularly where those commitments meet the demands of the governments it operates under.
Result: Voted on as Proposal 8, listed in the company's filing as the privacy and human rights report, at the February 28, 2024 annual meeting. Not approved: 147,994,563 votes for, 8,879,045,656 against, 106,447,688 abstaining, and 3,275,055,901 broker non-votes. That is 1.64% support counting only votes for and against, or 1.62% if abstentions are included in the base.
we found no documented change
NLPC petitioned Comcast's board to adopt a policy requiring director candidates to disclose their personal charitable and political campaign contributions.
Result: Comcast successfully petitioned the SEC to exclude the proposal from its proxy statement; no shareholder vote occurred.
NLPC compiled and published campaign-contribution data on Comcast's director nominees itself, drawn from FEC records, in a proxy memo opposing all 10 director nominees; we found no documented change by Comcast to its own disclosure practices.
The resolution asked Alphabet to commission an independent human-rights impact assessment of how its algorithmic advertising and ad-targeting systems affect users' privacy and rights.
With members of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, including Mercy Investment Services, Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment, As You Sow, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation
Result: The proposal won the support of 56 percent of shares not controlled by Alphabet founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page or CEO Eric Schmidt's affiliated holdings, following a 2022 racial-equity audit proposal at Alphabet that had already won 64 percent of the independent vote.
We found no documented change by the company following this vote.
The resolution asked AT&T to publicly disclose how its political contributions align with the company's own stated public-policy priorities and sustainability goals.
Result: Withdrawn after AT&T agreed to As You Sow's request.
AT&T committed to publish data on how its political spending aligns with its stated positions. We could not confirm that this data has since appeared in the company's published political engagement reporting.
Asked the bank to publish a report, updated twice a year, on any requests it receives from government officials to close customer accounts, covering who made each request, what it involved, when it was made, what the bank decided and why.
Result: Filed under Rule 14a-8 and never put to a vote. On March 21, 2023 the staff of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance told the bank it would not recommend enforcement action if the proposal was left out of the proxy statement, on the ground that it could be excluded under Rule 14a-8(i)(7) as relating to ordinary business operations. The staff wrote that the proposal relates to, and does not transcend, ordinary business matters.
we found no documented change
The CPA-Zicklin Index scores companies on whether they disclose political spending, how they set internal rules on political contributions, and whether the board oversees that spending.
Result: The 2022 edition was the first to cover the full Russell 1000; 78% of S&P 500 companies fully or partially disclosed political spending or restricted at least one type of spending, and the average S&P 500 score rose 3% year over year.
More than half of S&P 500 companies had board-level oversight of political spending by 2022, according to the source, reflecting a trend of rising disclosure scores over the decade the index has run (since 2012).
Two separate resolutions asked Amazon to stop selling its Rekognition facial-recognition technology to government and law-enforcement agencies, and to commission an independent study of the technology's effect on civil rights and privacy.
Result: The proposal to halt sales to government agencies received 2.4 percent support; the proposal for an independent civil-rights and privacy study received 27.5 percent support.
We found no documented change in Amazon's Rekognition sales policy that resulted specifically from this 2019 vote in the sources reviewed; Amazon defended the product, saying its use was governed by its existing code of conduct.
Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition proposals, TechCrunch
The resolutions asked each company to publish a detailed report on how fake news, election interference, hate speech, and (at Facebook) violent content were spreading on its platform, and on what the company was doing to enforce its own policies against them.
With New York State Common Retirement Fund, Illinois State Treasurer Michael W. Frerichs, Baldwin Brothers Inc., Harrington Investments
Result: Facebook's content-governance proposal received about 30 percent support; a similar proposal at Alphabet received about 36 percent support.
We found no documented policy change that Facebook, Twitter, or Alphabet made specifically in response to these 2018 votes in the sources reviewed; proxy advisor ISS had recommended in favor, saying shareholders would benefit from more disclosure.
Arjuna Capital and NY State Ask Facebook to Explain Plans for Governing Content, Business Wire
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.