Facebook has hired another top Democrat staffer to its lobbying team, in a year that’s seen the social media giant spend $3.3 million on lobbying so far.
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Chris Randle started as the company’s newest government affairs specialist this week. Before coming to Facebook, he served as legislative director to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), and has previously worked for several California Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
There is something of a revolving door between Facebook and the Democratic party. Breitbart news found that at least 45 former staffers from the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, as well as the Obama White House, now occupy top positions in Facebook.
In left-leaning Silicon Valley, former Democrats also occupy top positions in Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Twitter, among others. Google alone poached 197 staff from the federal government between 2006 and 2016, mostly Democrats and many from the Obama campaign.
Facebook’s latest federal lobbying effort comes after months of privacy scandals for the company, beginning with the news in March that consulting firm Cambridge Analytica accessed the private data of some 87 million Facebook users and their friends.
The fallout from the scandal saw Facebook scramble to introduce new privacy measures, and saw its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, hauled before hearings at the House and the Senate last month.
During the hearings, Zuckerberg was questioned by almost 100 lawmakers over two marathon sessions. Facebook has donated almost $650,000 to the campaigns of all but 16 of these lawmakers.
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