Kiwi investors confront the online giants

and use its influence as a shareholder to encourage the companies to take action.

“We have more leverage to progress these issues by holding shares and actively engaging and voting than by divesting.”

She is optimistic that it will be able to bring other major investors on board and noted that combined pressure from a large number of investors had a greater chance of success.

“This is an issue that we feel very strongly about. As share owners we have a voice and a say and, in this situation, we want to use the levers as fully as possible to ensure the company knows that, as share owners, we expect change. Complacency is not an option.

“By speaking to companies with a unified voice, investors can more effectively communicate their concerns to corporate management.

“The result is typically a more informed and constructive dialogue. There are also benefits from knowledge sharing and efficiency measures from working in a group.”

KiwiSaver providers manage more than $50b among them. That has some clout, but remains small on a global scale.

John Berry, chief executive of responsible investment specialist Pathfinder, believes raising the issue is more important than size. “Part of it is raising awareness.” Individuals may feel powerless to make change, but he pointed to the recent removal of single-use plastic bags as a successful result from public pressure.

“People have more power than they think.”

He said people can vote in elections and make change with consumer choices, and believes KiwiSaver should also be a place where people can voice their views.

While Milford pulling its investment in Facebook might not have a direct impact on the company’s share price, it raised awareness of the issue, Berry said.

“It indirectly changes things by raising awareness and making it something people are going to talk about.

“It challenges Facebook in terms of getting the conversation going around this.”

Berry said KiwiSaver was a long-term investment and, as such, should take responsible investment into account.

But that left providers trying to come up with a set of investment values that matched what investors wanted.

The challenge was that people don’t all want the same thing, Berry said.

It meant providers offered funds that ranged from investing in any company which was legal, to those who decided to invest only in companies that did good.

Berry said it was good to have a variety of offerings in the market as it allowed people to pick the one that suited them best.

But he said providers needed to make it clear what they did and didn’t invest in, to make it easy for investors.

“People need to understand what is in their KiwiSaver.”

And he pointed out that there are many grey areas.

“Tobacco companies and their products are legal but many Kiwis would not want their retirement savings going into them.”

Most providers have pulled out of tobacco stocks but one major provider has remained invested until recently.

Berry said the challenge around armament investment was choosing which weapons were okay to invest in and which were not.

KiwiSaver providers pulled out of investing in companies linked to cluster bombs and nuclear weapons in 2016.

But there are still investments in other companies linked to military grade weapons and there are the civilian weapons makers and sellers which are in a number of indices which guide fund managers. That means they are likely to be held indirectly by a number of KiwiSaver providers.

“It is really complex,” said Berry.

The Government is banning the ownership of semi-automatic and military style weapons but has not banned investment in those companies.

What the social media companies are doing

Facebook says it removed the attacker’s original video, which was viewed about 4000 times on the site, within minutes of being contacted by the New Zealand police.

In the 24 hours after the attack, it removed about 300,000 reposted videos and blocked more than 1.2 million attempts to upload it.

“We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people,” deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby told the Financial Times.

YouTube has removed tens of thousands of videos as well as closing hundreds of accounts that promoted the shooter. “Our teams are continuing to work around the clock to prevent violent and graphic content from spreading, we know there is much more work to do,” a spokeswoman said.

Twitter has said it was “continuously monitoring and removing any content that depicts the tragedy” and urged users not to view or share it.