Facebook secretly funded campaign to kill anti-Big Tech legislation

Facebook has reportedly secretly funded a nationwide "grassroots" campaign to fight anti-Big Tech antitrust legislation gaining momentum in Congress, using covert operations to try and sway the public against bills that would hurt the company.

Facebook founded American Edge, a political advocacy group, in late 2019 with a single $4 million donation in order to try and kill bipartisan antitrust legislation in Washington through op-eds in local papers, critical advertisements, and collaborations with conservative think tanks, business associations, and former national security officials, the Washington Post reported.

The group spent almost $2 million on Facebook ads and more than $70,000 on Google ads, along with placing multiple strategic op-eds to criticize the antitrust bills as hurting the tech sector and allowing China and Russia to dominate the United States in tech innovation.