CfA's March 26, 2021 Newsletter

Our Recent Work:

• Facebook Launches P.R. Blitz Ahead of Zuckerberg Testimony: Earlier this month, TTP released a report showing that Facebook, in the lead-up to the March 25 Congressional hearing where Mark Zuckerberg would testify, launched a massive PR campaign aimed at DC insiders and influential decision-makers. TTP tracked popular Beltway newsletters throughout the month of February, and found that Facebook, and its dark money political advocacy group American Edge, sponsored at least one influential newsletter on every business day throughout the month. These newsletters included POLITICO’s Morning Tech, Huddle, and Playbook; The Hill’s Morning and 12:30pm Reports; Axios AM, PM, Sneak Peek, and Login; and Punchbowl. TTP’s report was originally covered by WIRED.

• Facebook's Militia Mess: A TTP report released on the eve of the tech CEO hearing revealed that Facebook is still home to hundreds of militia group pages. Roughly 70% of the Facebook pages identified by TTP had the word “militia” in their name, making them hard to miss. This seriously calls into question Facebook’s willingness or ability to actually put in the effort needed to remove these groups. Even worse, the report found that Facebook was actually auto-generating some of these groups. The report was covered by BuzzFeed News, The Independent, Politico, and others. Within 24 hours of the report’s release, Facebook removed nearly all of the groups identified within the report.
  • As a result of the growing media spotlight on our work and research, Project Director Katie Paul was asked by multiple news outlets to provide rapid response commentary on the afternoon of March 25 as the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter were testifying before Congress.

• CfA Asks House Ethics Committee to Provide Guidance Regarding Abuse of Proxy Voting: CfA sent a letter to the House Committee on Ethics asking the committee to issue guidance as to the proper use of proxy voting, first adopted by the House in May 2020. The request is in response to 13 members of the House using the pandemic as an excuse to skip in-person votes to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida. The letter was first reported on by CNN.

• Big Tech’s Backdoor to the FTC: TTP investigation shows how deeply Big Tech-funded George Mason University has infiltrated the Federal Trade Commission, which is tasked with protecting consumers and promoting competition in the industry. The investigation stemmed from a heavily redacted FTC inspector general report obtained by TTP through an open records request. TTP believed the subject of this report to be Joshua Wright, a former Republican FTC commissioner who has argued that government should take a hands-off approach to the tech industry, and this theory was confirmed when Bloomberg reached out to Wright for comment while covering the report.

• As Trump Spread Election Lies, Big Tech Worked His Trade Office: TTP published a report showing how Apple, Google, and Facebook sought to leverage Trump’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for their corporate agendas last year, undaunted by Trump’s embrace of baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election. Emails obtained through public records requests show that Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple all worked closely with the office on issues affecting their international business, all while the CEOs released public statements condemning Trump’s rhetoric that was ongoing at the time. The report was first covered by Politico.

• Facebook v. Australia: Unaccountable Concentrated Power: TTP published an op-ed in response to Facebook’s successful lobbying of the Australian government to water down a new law which would have required companies like Facebook and Google to fairly compensate Australian news outlets when they use their content on their platforms. The op-ed argues that this example is a sign of things to come for other government bodies around the world who may be pressured to buckle under the weight of the power that these massive tech companies wield.

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