San Francisco board condemns naming of local hospital for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan after they gave $75m toward a new trauma center
Supervisors in San Francisco overwhelmingly approved a resolution Tuesday condemning the naming of the city's public hospital for Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr Priscilla Chan, in 2015 after the couple gave $75million toward a new acute care and trauma center.
The nonbinding resolution does not have the force of law and does not require the hospital to do anything. The hospital was the first in San Francisco to administer vaccines protecting against the coronavirus on Tuesday. The current board does not have the authority to revoke the agreement, resolution co-sponsor Supervisor Gordon Mar said.
But he said the resolution would send the message that San Francisco is not for sale and that a public hospital that caters to the poor should not bear the name of someone whose social media platform endangers public health, spreads misinformation and violates privacy.
'There's been growing public outrage that this important public health institution was named and the naming rights were sold to the highest bidder and to somebody as controversial as Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook,' he said.
Supervisors in San Francisco overwhelmingly approved a resolution Tuesday condemning the naming of the city's public hospital for Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan (pictured together in 2019)
Supporters of a condemnation say Zuckerberg has endangered public health and threatened democracy with Facebook. A woman wearing a mask walks under a sign for Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center in San Francisco on Monday
The measure passed 10-1, with Board President Norman Yee the only no vote.
He said nonprofits often use naming rights to spur donations and while this involved city property, he could not support the condemnation without more of a policy discussion.
Yee said he would support a move to remove Zuckerberg's name and retain Dr Chan's name on the hospital. He was among several supervisors behind the 2015 resolution that approved the gift and name change.
San Francisco, where Zuckerberg and Chan have a home, has increasingly soured on the social media behemoth, dismayed by the company's sluggish response to protecting consumer privacy and halting the proliferation of false statements.
The federal government is seeking to break up Facebook as lawmakers call for stronger oversight of a company they say has gotten too big.
Tuesday's resolution is not a new sentiment as local Facebook critics, including some nurses at San Francisco General, have argued for years to remove the Zuckerberg name.
They say the new name, good for 50 years, is inappropriate when San Francisco taxpayers are paying for most of the hospital's upgrade by approving more than $1billion in bonds.
Julie French, a hospital employee, said in an email via her personal account to the supervisors that while it would be reasonable to name a building, cafeteria or rooftop for big donors, to rename the whole hospital is 'a slap in the face.'
Tuesday's resolution is not a new sentiment as local Facebook critics, including some nurses at San Francisco General, have argued for years to remove the Zuckerberg name (pictured on the hospital)
'We are not a ballpark or a stadium to be bought and sold for commercial purposes. We are a public hospital of and for the people of the city and county of San Francisco. We deserve to have that dignity preserved,' she said.
But Dr Susan Ehrlich, chief executive of the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, said in a statement that the donation has allowed the hospital to acquire state-of-the-art technology and the naming reflects their appreciation.
'Naming is an important convention in philanthropy that encourages additional donors, and our hospital relies on the support of the community, the City and County of San Francisco, and generous private philanthropy,' she said.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple's philanthropic arm, directed requests for comment to the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.
Its CEO, Kim Meredith, said in a statement the gift helped pay for needed furniture, fixtures and equipment for the new hospital. She added that Chan studied and practiced as a resident pediatrician at the hospital.
'We are proud that the hospital now bears their names and disappointed in attempts to condemn it - especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when the impact of their gift has never been greater,' she said.
The hospital is closely entwined with San Francisco.
It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire and treated patients in ensuing health crises, including the 1918 Spanish influenza, the AIDS epidemic and the current coronavirus pandemic. The hospital serves more than 100,000 people annually.
The resolution declares that the city and county of San Francisco should not reward tax dodges, which some say the donation is.
It also lists a number of Facebook's failings, including its failure to protect users from major security breaches, including its Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal in 2018.
The mayor at the time of the donation, Ed Lee, praised the agreement as did the current mayor, London Breed, who was president of the Board of Supervisors when a board with different members approved the name change.
The resolution also urges city departments to establish clear standards and criteria so that naming rights reflect San Francisco values of social and racial justice.
Last week, the US government and 48 states and districts sued Facebook, accusing it of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors. The landmark antitrust lawsuits was announced by the FTC and New York AG Letitia James
Last week, the US government and 48 states and districts sued Facebook, accusing it of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors.
The government is seeking remedies that could include a forced spinoff of the social network's Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services.
The landmark antitrust lawsuits, announced by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General Letitia James, mark the second major government offensive this year against seemingly untouchable tech behemoths.
The Justice Department sued Google in October for abusing its dominance in online search and advertising — the government's most significant attempt to buttress competition since its historic case against Microsoft two decades ago. Amazon and Apple also have been under investigation in Congress and by federal authorities for alleged anticompetitive conduct.
James noted at a press conference that 'it's really critically important that we block this predatory acquisition of companies and that we restore confidence to the market'.
The FTC said Facebook has engaged in a 'a systematic strategy' to eliminate its competition, including by purchasing smaller up-and-coming rivals like Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
James echoed that in her press conference, saying Facebook 'used its monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users'.
The FTC fined Facebook $5billion in 2019 for privacy violations and instituted new oversight and restrictions on its business.
The fine was the largest the agency has ever levied on a tech company, although it had no visible impact on Facebook's business.
Facebook called the government actions 'revisionist history' that punishes successful businesses and noted that the FTC cleared the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions years ago.
'The government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final,' Facebook general counsel Jennifer Newstead said in a statement that echoed the company's response to a recent congressional antitrust probe.
Facebook is the world's biggest social network with 2.7 billion users and a company with a market value of nearly $800billion whose CEO Zuckerberg is the world's fifth-richest individual and the most public face of Big Tech swagger.
James alleged Facebook had a practice of opening its site to third-party app developers, then abruptly cutting off developers that it saw as a threat.
The lawsuit — which includes 46 states, Guam and the District of Columbia — accuses Facebook of anti-competitive conduct and using its market dominance to harvest consumer data and reap a fortune in advertising revenues.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who was on the executive committee of attorneys general conducting the investigation, said the litigation has the potential to alter the communications landscape the way the breakup of AT&T's local phone service monopoly in the early 1980s did.
'Our hope is to restructure the social networking marketplace in the United States, and right now there's one player,' Stein told reporters. James said the coalition worked collaboratively with the FTC but noted the attorneys general conducted their investigation separately.
President-elect Joe Biden has said the breakup of Big Tech giants should be seriously considered. He has singled out Facebook's Zuckerberg for scorn, calling him 'a real problem'.
Instagram and WhatsApp are among some 70 companies that Facebook has acquired over the past 15 years. But they are the ones most frequently held up by Facebook critics as properties that should be split off.
Facebook paid $1billion for Instagram, bolstering the social network's business a month before its stock went public. At the time, the photo-sharing app had about 30 million users and wasn't producing any revenue.
A few years later, Facebook acquired WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging service, for $19billion.
Zuckerberg vowed both companies would be run independently, but over the years the services have become increasingly integrated. Users are now able to link accounts and share content across the platforms. Instagram now has more than 1 billion users worldwide. Such integration could make it more difficult to break off the companies.