I'm Canadian so I don't really understand how these "PAC" things works. The article says that by law Facebook the corporation is not allowed to give donations to politicians but they're allowed to collect money from their employees and forward it along with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge Facebook would like this?<p>As an employee, why would you go for this? If you prefer a republican candidate and gave money to Facebook to give out on your behalf can they just go ahead and give it to the opposition of your preferred candidate?<p>I imagine this was initially done by labor unions in the past and now corporations have co-opted this loophole but still, this all seems very strange to me.<p>Also, does Facebook have a responsibility to track who's giving what? Because if they have international hires on staff, surely only citizens of the US can donate?
Sometimes I think every child that's born should receive not only a Social Security Number, but a trust, a holding corporation, and a political action committee in his/her name.<p>The political and legal playing field has always been tilted in one way or another, but it keeps getting more and more extreme.
I just fail to see how the employees of Facebook, or any company really, can't make their voices heard by doing a minimum level of research and supporting a candidate or NGO on their own.
I'm not surprised by this. In fact, I'm surprised this hasn't happened much sooner and their lobbying budget is sub-$5 million dollars. They're going to have to gain legislative access to sustain their business model of "disclosing information to third parties for the economic benefit of Facebook."
I <i>really</i> don't know if I want Facebook involved in politics when they show such a blatant cavalier approach to privacy, regardless of how its (what can soon be referred to as) constituents think of it.