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Seattle Finds Facebook in Violation of City Campaign Finance Law (reuters.com)
Seattle's election authority said on Monday that Facebook is in violation of a city law that requires disclosure of who buys election ads, the first attempt of its kind to regulate U.S. political ads on the internet. From a report: Facebook must disclose details about spending in last year's Seattle city elections or face penalties, Wayne Barnett, executive director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, said in a statement. The penalties could be up to $5,000 per advertising buy, Barnett said, adding that he would discuss next steps this week with Seattle's city attorney.
I like this
They're cutting the balls of Facebook, passing a law to cut the balls of Apple's inbuilt obsolescence, have native Indian tribes controlling most of the forests. Yep i like Washington state Too bad about those blue scanners tracking cars on the 405. Now they need to cut the balls off microsoft who installed those.
Wow, the petty-cash will not even get a dent.
Facebook has physical offices within the city of Seattle. I'm sure they can think of several ways to enforce this upon those offices.
Facebook is guilty of so much... if they were even fairly prosecuted for half of it they'd have to shut down the company.
... cannibalizing each other.
No surprise - it's how things always end when pretense of care for people is used as a route to power.
Why? Because power is the real end game, not people.
The law went unenforced against tech companies until a local newspaper, The Stranger, published a story in December in the wake of the Russia allegations asking why.
It's ironic because, in both of Obama's campaigns he claimed to get the majority of his fundraising from individual credit card donations and many people pointed out that nobody could track the source of the money wondering if that was in violation of campaign finance laws.
Nobody bothered investigating that.
OTOH, California and Washington refused to provide information to Trump's election investigation too because they felt they had a right to ignore laws they detest. Perhaps Facebook and Google should do the same and cite to the courts this same rationale.
For the big Giants of the internet the last thing they want is established precedent where a metro municipal code drives the practice of national or global content.
Expect Facebook to fight back with amicus briefs from every major content provider weighing in on thier side.
This would be a quixotic foray for Seattle, and a phyrric victory the best possible outcome.
Just paid without tax $13.75 for a 32 pack at Costco. That's 42.97 cents per can which is much less than your 47 cent challenge.
Block all internet in Seattle.
Too bad it doesn't include jail time for senior execs
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Funny thing there was an episode of Sliders codemning Republicans for taxing sodas etc. Funny it turned out to be Democrats to do it instead.
Because the Internet exists no-where, one can easily argue that it exists everywhere.
And this is how countries start applying national laws to international companies who have an Internet Presence in their country.
And that presence is the consumer viewing or interacting with the website primarily, a company office secondarily.
So, with all the countries (rightfully) applying basic national laws to anyone providing a service to their residences leads to the next step:
These companies have a presence in, and should be following all the laws for sub-national political entities.
The US has started this by having internet companies follow broad laws at the state level. Which is usually fairly homogeneous.
However, even smaller localities have a legitimate claim to apply their laws to services being offered to their residents, since the point of interaction is physically at the consumers terminal.
The rhetoric from a decade ago "How can you follow all the laws for all the countries who can view your content?", turned out to be: You simply provide a different experience to each geographic region. And follow the laws required.
This will get exponentially more difficult once all the localities start to realise that they need to apply their laws to all entities, or start doing the TV thing and black-out regions.
For disclosing the financing behind a political ad? If I buy TV time or space on a billboard for a political ad, it's up to me to place some identifying information within the ad. The media owners may have no idea who is behind the advertisement. Because more often than not, the space in the media is purchased through an ad agency or other intermediary.
Now, if Seattle determines that some ad isn't within compliance of an election law, they can serve Facebook with a warrant to find out who pays for that account. But Facebook has no way of determining in advance to what use I am putting my pages. I might be using it to promote my favorite pizza place or microbrewery. It's not up to Facebook to track that in advance. They may not even have the expertise to evaluate ads for political content.
Have gnu, will travel.
Facebook has physical offices within the city of Seattle
Which can be closed in a day, if needed. City laws apply only within the city.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Facebook should just ban any advertising or news on their platform mentioning members of the city council positively.
I mean, after all, as long as they are going to have to go through the trouble and expense of setting something up to figure out which advertising might be considered political and may affect city elections, they could just tack that policy on to make good use of it. Alternately, they could just move all offices and employees out of the State and then point to the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Back in the non-seattle-normal-world, advertisers are sometimes required to include who paid for an ad in their ad, but they people they pay to show the advertisement aren't setup to become the arbiters of what is a political ad and what isn't and trace who paid for what. How are they supposed to know if someone's post in support of a politician on their Facebook page is paid advertising or free publicity, for example?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
So you're saying the city should send out the pigs and toss some FB execs in the clink until the company pays up?
C'mon, if we're going to have a police state - and we already do - we might as well put it to good use.
you'd be paying $3.15 per 12-pack, which isn't too hard to find if you're shopping sales on Coke/Pepsi products, or buying store brands
It's not hard to find 12-packs on sale 3 for $10, or occasionally 4 for $11, but you'll never see those princes within the Seattle city limits with the sugar tax.