Google, Facebook, and Twitter's Conflict of Interest in Vaccines

The M+G+R Foundation

Google, Facebook, and Twitter's Conflict of Interest in Vaccines

Main investors in Social Media Platforms are major investors in Vaccine Industry (1)

Can we expect them to become unbiased "fact checkers" about vaccines?

Originally published on January 2nd, 2021

A guest document by Ricardo de Valencia

INTRODUCTION

Google, Facebook and Twitter, along with other so-called "social" media platforms, are giant machines driven not by simple altruism, but by financial interests first and foremost. Therefore, to know the direction in which they really move, it would be very informative to know their sources of income and their sources of financing.

Since they are essentially free platforms, it is quite obvious that their income must be mainly through advertising. As the pharmaceutical industry is a major advertiser, social media platforms must inevitably have a bias in reporting or censoring information about pharmaceutical products and, particularly, those related to vaccines.

The information bias caused by the interest of not harming their advertisers is an interesting issue, but what we are going to examine in this document are the financial sources. Who are the investors of Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Using publicly available information, it is possible to reveal that the largest investors in these companies are also investors in the vaccine industry.

DETAILS

Much is said about the famous personalities behind Google, Facebook and Twitter - people like Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey - but, among the biggest investors, in those companies are also institutional investors - companies or organizations that invest money on behalf of clients or members.

Some of the major institutional shareholders behind Google, Facebook and Twitter are also great investors in the vaccine industry: (2)

* Vanguard Group, an investment company with over $64 billion in vaccine industry shares, is the largest institutional shareholder in Facebook, Alphabet (the parent company of YouTube and Google) and Twitter, with $84.7 billion worth of shares between all the three media companies.

* Another investment company, BlackRock, has at least $50 billion worth of shares in vaccine-related companies. At the same time, it is one of the largest institutional shareholders of the Facebook-Google-Twitter trio, with the sum of its investment in all three reaching a value of more than $75 billion.

* The investment company FMR (Fidelity) also stands out. It is the major institutional shareholder of the vaccination companies Regeneron and Moderna, with a value of at least 9.5 billion dollars between the two. This company is the third largest institutional shareholder of Facebook and the fifth largest institutional shareholder of Alphabet, with an investment value of more than 32 billion and 11 billion dollars, respectively.

* The investment companies Geode and Northern Trust also have a large volume of shares simultaneously in the Google-Facebook-Twitter trio and in many vaccine companies. Together with those related to Vanguard and BlackRock, we are speaking of these vaccine companies: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Inovio, Regeneron, Vaxart, Vir Biotechnology, Heat Biologics and Gilead. (See Appendix for details)

Despite the great voting power in the hands of a few individuals controlling the media platforms (as in the case of Facebook- with Zuckerberg - and Alphabet - with Larry Page and Sergey Brin) (3), there is no doubt that the amounts of money invested by the major institutional shareholders - in the order of tens of billions of dollars in both fields - poses an enormous conflict of interest that may have a significant influence on the policies of the social media platforms towards vaccines.

From the investors' point of view: If you have tens of billions of dollars invested in vaccine companies and, at the same time, you are investing large amounts of money in global media platforms, then what is expected in the business world is that you will do your best to make sure that the media platforms do not spread information that will ruin your vaccine business.

From the point of view of social platforms: In light of the information presented here, if you were a manager of Facebook, Google or Twitter, would you consent to spread information that negatively affects vaccines, harming your biggest investors? Wouldn't you feel "subtly encouraged" to implement in your platform censorship policies to block any opinion or information contrary to the promotion of vaccines?

Some more assorted facts

There are some more facts, as far as we know:

* Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google's parent company), teams with the pharma industry to conduct drug and vaccine clinical trials. (4)

* In 2016, Alphabet inked a $715 million deal with GlaxoSmithKline to create Galvani, another venture to develop bioelectronic medicines and vaccines and to mine medical information from Google customers. (5)

* Google's Customer Services President, Mary Ellen Coe, sits on Merck's board (6). As of October 2020, Merck is developing two separate potential coronavirus vaccines. (7)

* In 2018, Google invested $27 million in Vaccitech to make vaccines for flu, MERS, and prostate cancer. In 2020, Vaccitech started work on a COVID vaccine. (5)

* Facebook and Google hired "FactChecker" (Politifact) to censor vaccine misinformation. Politifact was launched by a grant from the Gates Foundation, the world's largest vaccine promoter. (5)

* Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellman, who was (until October 2019) the lead director of the committee in charge of making Facebook policy, served also as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014-2020. (8)

In case someone doesn't know or doesn't remember, Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook (9), and many people use Instagram as a source of news (10). YouTube and Google, as we said before, are subsidiaries of the same company, Alphabet (11). Another major search engine, Bing, belongs to Microsoft, which, as everyone knows, is linked to Bill Gates, one of the world's largest sponsors of vaccines (12).

Pinterest and Snapchat, which many people use to get news (10), also have institutional shareholders who at the same time have large investments in the vaccine industry (see Appendix).

CONCLUSION

There you have it: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Snapchat, Google and Bing - Are they in a fair position to be the watchdogs against vaccine "disinformation"?

Are they really in a fair position to build policies for objective and unbiased filtering of information and news about vaccines? Is there not, rather, a motivation for their information filters to be diverted towards the promotion of vaccines? And, in particular, toward the promotion of the Covid-19 vaccines, regardless of any scientifically based claims that may exist?

APPENDIX

Please note that we are referring here to institutional investors, apart from personal investors. (3)

Table 1

Top 3 Institutional Holders of each Media Company

	# 1	# 2	# 3
Facebook	Vanguard (7.71%)	BlackRock (6.59%)	FMR (5.16%)
Alphabet	Vanguard (6.73%)	BlackRock (6.07%)	Price Assoc. (4.06%)
Twitter	Vanguard (10.20%)	Morgan Stanley (7.55%)	BlackRock (7.30%)
Pinterest	Vanguard (7.92%)	BlackRock (4.64%)	Flossbach v.S. (3.33%)
Snapchat	Price Assoc. (9.20%)	Vanguard (6.94%)	Edgewood M.C. (6.09%)

NOTES
Alphabet: the company who owns Google and YouTube
Snapchat: properly, the company is Snap and the product Snapchat
Vanguard: The Vanguard Group, Inc., not including related Mutual Funds

Table 2

Participation quota of major Institutional Investors in Social Media Platforms (Part 1)

	Vanguard		BlackRock		FMR
	Shares	Value	Shares	Value	Shares	Value
Facebook	7.71%	$48.5B	6.59%	$41.5B	5.16%	$32.5B
Alphabet	6.73%	$32.6B	6.07%	$29.4B	2.33%	$11.3B
Twitter	10.20%	$3.6B	7.30%	$2.6B	1.44%	$0.5B
Pinterest	7.92%	$1.7B	4.64%	$1.0B	n.a.	n.a.
Snapchat	6.94%	$2.2B	4.43%	$1.4B	1.33%	$0.4B
TOTAL		$88.6B		$75.9B		$44.7B

NOTES
Vanguard: The Vanguard Group, Inc., not including related Mutual Funds
Please note: $48.5B = 48.5 billion dollars (1 billion = 1 000 000 000)
n.a. = information absent or not accessible in the original source

Table 3

Participation quota of major Institutional Investors in Social Media Platforms (Part 2)

	Geode		Northern Trust
	Shares	Value	Shares	Value
Facebook	1.53%	$9.7B	1.18%	$7.5B
Alphabet	1.34%	$6.5B	1.21%	$5.9B
Twitter	1.58%	$0.6B	1.50%	$0.5B
Pinterest	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.
Snapchat	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.
TOTAL		$16.8B		$13.9B

NOTES
Please note: $9.7B = 9.7 billion dollars (1 billion = 1 000 000 000)
n.a. = information absent or not accessible in the original source

Table 4

Participation quota of selected Institutional Investors in Vaccine Companies (Part 1)

	Vanguard		BlackRock		FMR
	Shares	Value	Shares	Value	Shares	Value
Johnson&Johnson	8.70%	$34.1B	7.36%	$28.8B	n.a.	n.a.
Pfizer	8.12%	$16.6B	7.46%	$15.2B	n.a.	n.a.
Gilead	8.19%	$6.5B	9.40%	$7.4B	n.a.	n.a.
Regeneron	7.62%	$4.5B	9.34%	$5.5B	12.13%	$7.1B
Moderna	7.04%	$2.0B	5.11%	$1.4B	8.65%	$2.4B
Novavax	8.53%	$0.6B	6.75%	$0.5B	1.69%	$0.1B
Vir Biotechnology	4.34%	$0.4B	3.20%	$0.1B	n.a.	n.a.
Inovio	5.52%	$0.1B	8.09%	$0.2B	n.a.	n.a.
Vaxart	4.56%	<$0.1B	3.90%	<$0.1B	n.a.	n.a.
Heat Biologics	3.79%	<$0.1B	1.51%	<$0.1B	n.a.	n.a.
TOTAL		$64.8B		$59.1B		$9.6B

NOTES
Vanguard: The Vanguard Group, Inc., not including related Mutual Funds
Please note: $34.1B = 34.1 billion dollars (1 billion = 1 000 000 000)
n.a. = information absent or not accessible in the original source

Table 5

Participation quota of selected Institutional Investors in Vaccine Companies (Part 2)

	Geode		Northern Trust
	Shares	Value	Shares	Value
Johnson&Johnson	1.50%	$5.9B	1.28%	$5.0B
Pfizer	1.61%	$3.3B	1.23%	$2.5B
Gilead	0.59%	$1.3B	1.26%	$1.0B
Regeneron	1.68%	$1.0B	n.a.	n.a.
Moderna	0.85%	$0.2B	n.a.	n.a.
Novavax	1.41%	<$0.1B	1.14%	<$0.1B
Vir Biotechnology	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.
Inovio	1.41%	<$0.1B	1.13%	<$0.1B
Vaxart	1.07%	<$0.1B	n.a.	n.a.
Heat Biologics	0.59%	<$0.1B	0.17%	<$0.1B
TOTAL		$11.7B		$8.5B

NOTES
Please note: $5.9B = 5.9 billion dollars (1 billion = 1 000 000 000)
n.a. = information absent or not accessible in the original source

NOTES

(1) We are referring, in particular, to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Snapchat and Google. Although we do not have researched the investors of Microsoft, the Microsoft search engine Bing undoubtedly has to be, in vaccine-related matters, under the shadow of Bill Gates, one of the world's major vaccine promoters.

(2) Source of data on shareholding: see APPENDIX.

(3) Institutional shareholders and the voting power of some individual shareholders:

Between the shareholders, there are companies (like Vanguard Group, BlackRock, etc.) and there are individuals (like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, etc.). Here we are giving figures of the former while, if one makes an internet search of "who owns such and such a company", most of the time one will find listings of the latter (for example, this list).

In the case of Alphabet and Facebook, a few individuals have special shares which give 10 times the voting power of the shares available to regular investors. This makes possible, for example, that Zuckerberg controls the majority of voting shares despite not owning a majority of the company (as told here). In the case of Alphabet, thanks to "super-voting" stocks, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have 51% of all votes despite not owning the majority of the shares. (The logic of such a situation is very well explained here)

(4) Verily teams with the pharma industry to conduct drug and vaccine clinical trials: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

(5) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claims that "YouTube’s owner, Google, is effectively a vaccine company"

(6) Google's Customer Services President, Mary Ellen Coe, sits on Merck's board

(7) As of October 2020, Merck is developing two separate potential coronavirus vaccines

(8) Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellman serving in Facebook policy committee and in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

(9) Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 - Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion in 2014

(10) Social media activities on select social networks by social media users in the United States in February 2019 - According to that study, the amount of respondents using each of the media platforms for getting news was: Instagram 18%, Facebook 38%, Snapchat 17%, Pinterest 9%, Twitter 56%. These percentages are not to be added. The figure of 18% Instagram, for example, means that, to the question "Do you use Instagram for getting news?" 18% of respondents answered affirmatively.

(11) Five companies owned by Alphabet

(12) For example: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation collaborates with the WHO (World Health Organization) "to increase coordination across the international vaccine community and create a Global Vaccine Action Plan" (Source). Companies that have received donations that in turn made money for the Gates Foundation include Merck, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (Source).