Facebook forms body to lobby and friend US Congress

No industry of any value in the United States is without a lobbying arm, and with an estimated worth of US$100-billion for Facebook, social networking is definitely a valuable industry. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Facebook filed paperwork to form a political action committee(PAC) this week.

This news was first confirmed by The Hill, a Washington DC newspaper focusing on US congressional politics. According to the Hill, reports that Facebook was considering in forming the PAC first surfaced after domain names such as FBPAC.org and FBPAC.us were registered.

Facebook by no means is forging new ground with this PAC, it follows in the footsteps of Google, which 2006 formed its own PAC in 2006.

In explaining the decision to form the lobbying body, a Facebook spokesperson told The Hill that, “FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”.

PACs are means by which bodies such as corporations, interest groups, and trade unions can legally donate money to candidates for office, which places Facebook’s PAC in the perfect position to play in role in the upcoming 2012 election cycle.

This move, according to the Guardian’s US blogger Richard Adams, comes on top of a reported US$550 000 spent by Facebook to lobby Washington in the first half of this year. In addition to this, Facebook has also made a number of high-profile political appointments including a former press secretary in the Clinton administration.

With Google already facing investigations from Congress on a number of fronts — most recently around possible antitrust activities — and Facebook having been hauled before the legislative body on numerous occasions, it makes sense that the world’s largest social network is looking into making these inroads into Washington politics.