The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Facebook quietly bankrolled small, grass-roots groups to fight its battles in Washington

Records show Facebook-funded American Edge backed minority interest groups, conservative think tanks and small business groups to create the appearance of opposition by grass-roots groups to antitrust regulation

By
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May 17, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
(Washington Post illustration/iStock)
12 min

In early March, weeks after senators advanced a sweeping bill to expand competition in the tech industry, a regional newspaper more than 2,000 miles from Silicon Valley ran a defensive op-ed.

“Instead of attacking these digital platforms, we need to work with these companies toward innovation and access for our businesses to survive,” Clayton Stanley, the president and CEO of The Alliance, an economic development organization in northeastern Mississippi, wrote in the Mississippi Business Journal.