Why Facebook Planted Positive Op-Eds About Big Tech In Local American Newspapers

Did Meta-owned Facebook secretly try to swing public mood in its favour by planting op-eds in American papers? A bombshell report by the Washington Post alleges that Facebook's goal was to lobby lawmakers to back down from antitrust regulation aimed to tech companies.

Reuters

How Meta's op-eds favour Big Tech

While all the ads and op-eds in favour of Meta/Facebook were presented as belonging to small businesses, they were all paid for by Facebook, one of the world's most wealthy corporations. According to the Post, the propaganda pieces contained mention of a "misguided agenda" aimed to "take away the technology we use everyday."

Reuters

Also read: Facebook To Lose 1.5 Million Teen Users As Youngsters Migrate To Apps Like TikTok

In April, the New York Post reported that local business owners in the US ran several op-eds and letters to the editor in multiple small publications. Weirdly, the wording of these articles was very similar and its writers defended Facebook and Alphabet-owned Google.

Below are two examples of such articles

Mississippi Business Journal/New York Post

Dallas Morning News/New York Post

What is Facebook fighting?

This comes in the middle of a Senate bill that intends to target tech biggies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. These companies would not be allowed from promoting their own products and/or services in search results. With this, regulators hope to improve the scope of competition.

In fact, American Edge, a political advocacy group founded by Facebook, placed multiple pieces in local newspapers. In these written pieces, the group made it look as if there is a grassroots effort to fight this antitrust legislation.

Times of India

Also read: How Hackers Fooled Tech Giants Like Apple, Meta Into Giving Personal Data Of Minors

In addition, the group has also backed studies that intend to show how much harm the legislation would bring to tech US' tech sector, suggesting that US would lose out to China if this legislation were allowed to be enforced.

It gets more intense! Turns out, American Edge had even enlisted many former national security officers to send out warnings of an impending Russia-backed hack if Congress succeeded in passing the antitrust reforms.

Meta

In conversation with the Washington Post, a Meta spokesperson had the following to say - "we¡¯ve been clear about our support for the American Edge Project¡¯s effort to educate the public about the benefits of American technology."

What do you think Facebook/Meta lobbying for Big Tech's interests in hopes of evading regulation? Let us know in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.

References

Moynihan, L., & Wayt, T. (2022, April 27). Google, Facebook defended by small business owners in bizarre newspaper letters. New York Post.

Cat Zakrzewski and Elizabeth Dwoskin (2022, April). Facebook quietly bankrolled small, grass-roots groups to fight its battles in Washington Records show. The Washington Post.

Zilber, A. (2022, May 19). Facebook secretly planted op-eds in local papers to lobby against tech reform: report. New York Post.