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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.
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.
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.
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.