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It’s a rare instance of a key tech issue such as data privacy, which has been the subject of talks on Capitol Hill for years with little to show for it, getting prominent billing from a top political spender.
Future Forward USA Action, a pro-Biden nonprofit labeled a “dark money” group by campaign watchdogs, has spent over $900,000 on TV ads promoting his remarks urging lawmakers to “finally hold social media companies accountable.”
Since Biden’s Feb. 7 address, the messages have run hundreds of times across the country and make up one of the group’s largest TV campaigns during that span, according to a review by the Technology 202 of data provided by the analytics firm AdImpact.
The ads highlight a brief section of Biden’s 72-minute speech where he told a joint session of Congress, “It’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on our kids and teenagers online [and] ban targeted advertising to children.”
The 15-second clips display the logos or icons of tech companies including Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok, and urge viewers to call the White House to thank Biden “for delivering for families.” Future Forward USA Action did not return a request for comment.
Rather than already being delivered, many of Biden’s proposals are still stuck in transit — Congress has not passed major new laws on data privacy or children’s online safety, despite years of discussions.
White those issues have received significant attention in Washington, major political groups have rarely made them the focus of national messaging efforts.
Biden himself spoke sparingly about those and other major tech policy issues such as antitrust during the 2020 presidential election, a trend that has largely extended into his time in office.
But the president offered some of his most detailed remarks to date on those topics in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in January calling for “Democrats and Republicans to come together to pass strong bipartisan legislation to hold Big Tech accountable.”
Biden returned to that theme during his address to Congress, and now his allies are spending large sums to highlight his work on those issues to the American public.
Another group supportive of Biden’s tech agenda said the ad campaign shows the push to rein in the tech giants is entering the forefront of U.S. politics.
“This is the kind of bipartisan, kitchen-table issue that affects all American families, and it’s encouraging to see the Biden universe continue this drumbeat after the President’s powerful State of the Union speech,” said Tech Oversight Project executive director Sacha Haworth.
The advocacy group, which has backed several legislative efforts targeting the tech giants, receives funding from philanthropic groups including the Omidyar Network.
Future Forward USA Action, a major player in Democratic politics, spent nearly $25 million on ads in 2020 and raised and donated tens of millions more to its affiliated PAC, the New York Times reported.
OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign and lobbying spending out of the Center for Responsive Politics watchdog group, has called Future Forward a “dark money” group, writing that such organizations are “required to reveal their backers, but they can hide the true source of funding by reporting a non-disclosing nonprofit or shell company as the donor.”
The group’s PAC has received millions in funding from Silicon Valley billionaires including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, according to reports.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), a key negotiator in data privacy talks on Capitol Hill, jabbed Biden over his tech comments after the address in February.
“If President Biden truly wants to promote Big Tech transparency and accountability, protect our kids, and strengthen privacy protections for Americans, he should join Energy and Commerce’s bipartisan efforts to enact comprehensive data privacy legislation,” she said in a statement.
Asked about the ad campaign, McMorris Rodgers said, “Our work continues on passing comprehensive privacy and data security legislation and getting it to the President’s desk this Congress.”
DOJ settles with Activision over esports salaries
The U.S. Justice Department resolved a lawsuit with gaming company Activision Blizzard, which ensures the latter will not curb esports players’ salaries in the event it is acquired by Microsoft, Emily Birnbaum and Cecilia D’Anastasio report for Bloomberg News.
The DOJ filed the agreement in a federal court following an investigation into whether Activision suppressed professional esport players’ pay, the report says.
“The Justice Department is asking the court for a consent decree that ensures Activision Blizzard is not allowed to enforce a ‘competitive balance tax,’ which penalized teams for paying esports players above a certain threshold set by the company,” Birnbaum and D’Anastasio write.
Activison in a statement said its previous salary regime was legal and did not significantly affect player salaries.
Microsoft’s pending $69 billion purchase of Activision is facing ongoing probes over concerns it would affect competition in the video game industry, including from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Australia to eject TikTok from government devices this week
Australia will remove TikTok from government devices this week, Kirsty Needham reports for Reuters, citing coverage from Australian newspapers.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese approved the measure following an analysis from the nation’s Home Affairs department, the report says. Victoria, a state in the southeast of the nation, will also ban the app from government devices.
The China-linked short form video app has come under scrutiny from several governments mainly due to national security concerns. In the United States, its CEO Shou Zi Chew testified to a House panel, where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle alleged the app has negative effects on children’s mental health and poses a danger to U.S. user data.
The likelihood of a full ban in the U.S. is still unknown. Our colleagues Cat Zakrzewski and Jeff Stein reported earlier that White House officials think congressional authority will be necessary to facilitate a TikTok ban, but lawmakers across Capitol Hill have yet to come to a consensus over what to do with the app.
Amazon lobbied to quash Oregon climate bill despite emission commitments
Amazon lobbied to end a bill in Oregon that would regulate its datacenter emissions, despite its own climate commitments, our colleague Caroline O’Donovan reports.
Oregon house representative Pam Marsh said lobbyists for the company have been pushing back against the bill since its unveiling. The legislation set a 100 percent emissions reduction deadline of 2040 for high-energy users. That includes Amazon, which plans on building three more datacenters in the state, Caroline writes.
The e-commerce giant, which has profited significantly from its Amazon Web Services cloud computing business, pledged net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and that it would move fully to renewable energy by 2025.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
Amazon spokesperson David Ward told Caroline that “a number of organizations, including Amazon, oppose HB2816 because the bill does not address the build-out of electric infrastructure that is needed to bring more clean energy to the grid.”
Twitter users react to the Twitter logo being replaced with a Shiba Inu dog, the face of cryptocurrency dogecoin, the value of which then jumped some 30 percent. Tech industry commentator Dare Obasanjo:
What a Time to Be Alive podcast co-host Patrick Monahan:
It took every remaining Twitter employee working over the weekend to replace the bird with the Doge, but everyone can agree the results are Le Epic Awesomesauce pic.twitter.com/w72OGSLRtO
— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) April 3, 2023
Tech and gadgets YouTuber Lance Ulanoff:
- The International Association of Privacy Professionals convenes its 2023 Global Privacy Summit with the first general session beginning at 9 a.m.
- The Stanford Cyber Policy Center holds a discussion on the Digital Services Act’s impact on European content moderation at 3 p.m.
- The R Street Institute holds an event to discuss data privacy and security legislation in 2023 at 4:30 p.m.
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