Meta Platforms was the top recipient of Congressional ad buys among big tech companies last year, taking in over $609,000, with Amazon close behind at $550,000.
According to LegiStorm’s spending database, all funding to Meta was spent to display ads on Facebook. Of the $609,000 total, $348,000 was spent by seventy Democrats, with the other $261,000 being spent by forty-nine Republicans.
The top spenders were Rep. Joshua Harder (D-CA), doling out $45,389 in ninety-seven transactions, and Rep. Jacob LaTurner (R-KS), who spent $40,622 across forty-seven transactions.
House rules permit members to spend official funds on advertisements relating to “official congressional business.” While rules forbid “campaign content” or “electioneering” some may promote their candidacy through posts linking to their official congressional websites and include images showcasing campaign materials.
The disclosure reflects a pattern of mutually beneficial spending between Facebook and the political class. Forbes reported in October of 2021, that Facebook’s top executives had donated almost $4 million to political candidates via 1,700 separate donations, over 1,000 of which went through the company’s PAC.
The PAC then in turn donated $2.7 million to several candidates and committees, including but not limited to eleven of the twelve senators on the Subcommittee for Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, which directly oversees legislation relevant to Facebook’s operations.
These Senators received a total of $190,000, a revelation that came to light at a time when this panel was interviewing Facebook’s Head of Safety, Antigone Davis.
House members received around $600,000 from such contributions with Speaker Nancy Pelosi receiving around $37,000.
Facebook’s lobbying expenditures rose to more than $20,000,000 in 2021, making it one of the largest lobbying forces last year, neck-and-neck with Amazon also nearly $20 million.
Currently, Meta Platforms is involved in lobbying several bills before the house dealing with issues of data encryption, platform competition, security and online advertisements.
Lobbying disclosures reveal that Facebook and various subsidiaries and Meta Platforms spent much of that $20 million aimed at killing bills like H.R. 3826, titled the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act of 2021, a bill that would generally prohibit a “covered platform” from wholly acquiring another company or the assets of another company engaged in similar commerce.
Another bill dealing with similar matters, H.R. 3825, the Endling Platform Monopolies Act, also aims to “eliminat[e] the conflicts of interest that arise from dominant online platforms’ concurrent ownership or control of an online platform and certain other businesses.”
Neither of the bills is expected to pass at least partly thanks to lobbying efforts by those who stand to lose the most.
