Tier3r
7 hours ago
Mark has been really successful in reframing his public image, but the reality? In 2023 Meta was the 9th largest spender on Washington lobbying, and the 2nd largest public company behind Amazon. It far outstrips Lockheed (14 million), Boeing (14.5 million) and General Motors (14.4 million). It spend 19 million in 2023 on lobbying, reflecting the sustained YoY increase since it spent 10 million in 2014. An undisclosed amount of that went to a firm that lobbied to ban TikTok, after it was leaked that among teens Facebook was being killed by TikTok. But testament to how effective his PR team has been is that far more people probably know about his haircut than his lobbying.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...