Platforms amass lobbying armada ahead of regulation battle
Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have doubled lobbying spend and hired an army of former government advisers ahead of looming privacy and anti-trust inquiries (New York Times).
Key points:
- The four tech firms spent $55m on lobbying in 2018, up from $27.5m in 2016
- Collectively hired 238 lobbyists in the first quarter of 2019, 75% of whom have served in government or on political campaigns
- NYT's article lists numerous prominent people with links to Senators and committees likely to oversee inquiries as on platforms’ payroll
The Federal Trade Commission trumpeted its new tech task force in February. There are 17 of them, or 7% of the lobbyists hired by tech firms between January and March. On the flip side, they are all attorneys, and the FTC says the task force will have the power to unwind mergers that have already taken place. Hence the platforms staffing up and $54m is relative peanuts - even in tax write off terms.
But they are not just hiring lobbyists. Ahead of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Damascene conversion to privacy, Facebook hired a bunch of privacy advocates from the Open Technology Institute, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Access Now. That should provide the platform with the inside track on the challenges ahead.
Regulators around the world are honing in on marketing surveillance – mainly user data capture, disclosure and use. The danger for marketers is they remain tone deaf to the real risk that user profiling and targeting could be severely checked. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is talking increasingly tough on marketing surveillance AND the need for new privacy laws and a better-resourced Privacy Commissioner. The marketing industry’s optimism for unrestrained access to user data might be facing storm clouds. Over the next few weeks, in Australia at least, we should find out.
