Maybe it is too hard to read with those Oculus glasses on. Or maybe Meta is sketchy. Meta? Sketchy? Perish the thought! Facebook has already been caught throttling information and manipulating and blocking links to stories that don’t fit its version of the way things ought to be. So the fact that Meta got caught playing fast and loose when it comes to obeying campaign finance laws is not exactly astonishing.
King County, Wash., Superior Court Judge Douglass North clipped Meta with a fine of $24.7 million Wednesday for 800 violations of the state’s Fair Campaign Practices Act. Under the law, companies that sell ads are obligated to document the names of the people who buy ads, who the ads target, how they are paid for, and the number of views each ad receives. That data has to be provided on demand to anyone who asks. Other media outlets have complied with the law since 1972. According to the story in the Associated Press, Meta has griped that the law violates the constitution. The rationale? It “unduly burdens” free speech. Meta also says that it is “virtually impossible” to comply with the law.
Okay, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. But just so we’re clear: Big Tech can track your movements, listen to your conversations, and tailor an advertising campaign specifically to your interests. It can sniff out someone who goes against the COVID narrative from miles away. It can decide which comments you can see and even which stories should have warnings. It can find and downgrade stories about Hunter Biden. If I am not mistaken, at one point didn’t Big Tech brag that in the near future it would know what you were thinking even before you did? But Meta, which a few years ago built a massive data center just up the road from where I used to live, decided it was too hard to keep track of its advertisers.
Yeah, about those conclusions. I think it’s safe to jump, now.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was happy with the ruling and the fine. Especially so since this is not the first time Meta/Facebook has been caught doing this. His office sued Facebook back in 2018 for the same violations. The result of that suit was a $238,000 fine and a pinky-swear, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-with-sugar-on-top promise from the company that it would be more transparent in the future and would not sell campaign ads in the state. Apparently, somebody missed the memo or the issue was not covered in the morning huddle. It kept selling ads, which prompted a 2020 suit by Ferguson and the accusation that the violations were intentional.
That Zuckerberg and his cronies believe that Big Tech is its own independent state and thus exempt from the rules that govern everyone else is no surprise. That Washington state would hold Meta’s feet to the fire is pleasantly surprising. But it makes one wonder how many other violations of other laws are lurking on Meta servers somewhere that will never be discovered.
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