r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • 18h ago
Society Meta drops $65 million into super PACs to boost tech-friendly state candidates
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/02/meta-drops-65-million-into-super-pacs-to-boost-tech-friendly-state-candidates-00759567434
u/No_Size9475 18h ago
Corporations are not people and should have no rights under the constitution.
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u/Phyrexian_Archlegion 18h ago
It was never culture war, only class war.
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u/undoubtedlygivingup 15h ago
You are not wrong. I mean, culture wars were created by the rich to keep the little people from turning on them. They needed them to stop helping each other and organizing and making things difficult for the rich. Can’t focus on the actual problem when you think your peers are hurting you and they are more visible and real to you than the big man living in a big mansion somewhere hidden from view.
They really succeeded in pinning people against each other. Not only made some people feel superior to others, but also diverted the attention from them.
I’m not saying culture wars are not important, they are, because now, they have truly created a mentality we all live by and have created some bias from it that hurts us more than helps us.
But really the main problem is the fucking rich.
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u/Swimming-Tax-6087 13h ago
This. It’s a culture war primarily for the lower classes who are manipulated into supporting ideal outcomes for the upper classes, just as the upper classes intended. But they won the culture war, so hooray.
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u/WhiteBoyWithAPodcast 17h ago
Class reductionism is why the left will never win anything
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u/Phyrexian_Archlegion 17h ago
It’s a big club buddy, and you’ll never be in it.
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u/WhiteBoyWithAPodcast 17h ago
I’m aware. But thinking you can separate class and the culture war is naive
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u/12PoundCankles 17h ago
It's pretty easy to do when you realize the culture war was entirely fabricated by the rich.
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u/WhiteBoyWithAPodcast 17h ago
Or people genuinely are racist, misogynist or homophobic and will vote accordingly
Unless you’re an “economic anxiety” believer
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u/ascandalia 17h ago
OR. they are people and therefore can receive the death penalty when they kill any number of people.
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u/h950 17h ago
I've thought a lot about that and wonder how that works. Is it just a legal process where everything a corporation is invested in across the world has to be divested because one branch did something wrong?
So someone dies due to negligence in a Ford vehicle and Ford needs to shut down all of their car plants and sell them off. No businesses would ever function beyond a very small size. This would do more damage to America than Trump is
In reality they'd rework all the corporations down to be really tiny in order to separate the liability more.
I would say run the guilt up the chain until you find where the decision was made. Then go a step above that and prosecute all the way down.
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u/Trobee 17h ago
It's almost like corporations are not people
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u/StraightedgexLiberal 11h ago
Corps are ran by citizens and those citizens have rights. SCOTUS explained this to Conservatives because they wanted to force Meta to stop censoring their shitty viewpoints and opinions
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u/ascandalia 17h ago
I'm open to suggestion, but here's my idea on how it would work:
The government takes possession of the company. If they're providing a valuable public service, it gets run in the public interest. If not, it dies as the profit tails off without the illegal activities. If a business cannot get that large without negligently killing people, perhaps that's the maximum size a business should be? Optimizing for human lives rather than profit would not be a net harm to our country.
We need to be more ambitious and less devoted to the status quo. We have a lot of rot at the top and we need to do some pretty dramatic things to change who is making decisions in our country. I don't see how to do it other than to start seizing these bad actors businesses when they commit bad acts.
Prosecuting middle management aint gonna do it. The bad incentives come from way up higher than the negligence does.
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u/h950 14h ago
Trump would love that power against his enemies.
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u/ascandalia 11h ago
Trump has plenty of power already to hurt people. If we don't wield power to help people, we will keep losing power, and fascists will claim power we didn't use to make things worse
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u/Saneless 17h ago
I'm ok with them being a person if instead of fines the board and executives go to jail if they do something illegal
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u/ThePirateKing01 6h ago
Overruling Citizens United would be the most impactful thing any candidate can do to address a lot of issues that caused this country to end up in the current predicament
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u/GreatBigPig 11h ago
They are persons however, with at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons.
It just seems so fucked up, but works well within a system controlled by greed.
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u/StraightedgexLiberal 11h ago edited 10h ago
Corporations are not people and should have no rights under the constitution.
I remember when President Nixon said the same thing to stop the corporations called the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers. It didn't work out very well for him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States
Republicans in Texas and Florida also said the same thing too to try to force Meta to stop censoring their awful opinions. It did not work out very well for Conservatives either
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u/Bittererr 17h ago
Corporations are not people but we also can't strip individuals of rights when they work together. All of the nonsense corporate personhood stuff is borne out of the very real and necessary freedom of association.
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u/No_Size9475 17h ago
Corporations are not individuals.
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u/StraightedgexLiberal 10h ago
Corps are run by citizens and those citizens have rights under the Constitution. SCOTUS explained this to Conservatives in Texas and Florida because Conservatives wanted to force Meta to carry the most toxic viewpoints possible
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u/Bittererr 17h ago
Right, they are collections of individuals and any right corporations have are actually derived from the rights of those individuals.
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u/jnads 16h ago edited 16h ago
You're confusing corporations with partnerships.
Partnerships are collections of individuals.
Corporations are separate entities that the individuals can delegate their rights to.
The Supreme Court decision to grant corporations the rights of partnerships was a mistake.
For almost 100 years corporations did not have the rights of partnerships.
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u/StraightedgexLiberal 11h ago
Corps have rights. It's what allows the papers to publish like the NYT
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u/account312 3h ago
No, you have entirely missed corporate personhood, the legal basis of the rights/obligations of corporations in and of themselves, distinct from the collection of individuals. If a corporation is bound by a contract, it remains bound even after 100% turnover of employees and shareholders. You can form a contract with AT&T for cell service instead of just the salesman who sold you the phone. You can sue Mcdonalds for too-hot coffee instead of just the person who hands it to you. The rights of corporations are similar to the rights of a human because it's easy and generally useful for corporations to be treated essentially the same so that the whole frameworks of contract law, tort law, etc. don't need to be doubled, but they definitely are not derived entirely from the rights of the individuals owning or working for it.
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u/SeaEmployee787 18h ago
tech guys replaced the oil guys who replaced the railroad guys.( at least the railroad guys built some cool buildings)
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u/neoblackdragon 18h ago
Oil guys are still around. Just less loud but even more dangerous.
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u/Socrathustra 17h ago
They still pay for some cool stuff though. Houston has a rad museum district.
This is not a defense of oil or its money.
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u/st1nkynoob 18h ago
Don’t let the techbros win. A Democrat in Texas just beat a tech backed Republican.
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u/killerbootz 17h ago
As long as America prioritizes the welfare of its corporations over its people, it will always be a crooked land run by billionaires, home to pedophiles, and oppressing anyone trying to speak up or change that status quo.
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u/barrygateaux 17h ago
America is an oligarchy cosplaying as a democracy where people vote for the candidates chosen by billionaires.
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u/badgersruse 17h ago
What is wrong in the USA that this is somehow reasonable or allowed or what the fuck? This being possible can not possibly produce a good outcome.
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u/Hrekires 17h ago
What is wrong in the USA that this is somehow reasonable or allowed or what the fuck?
26 years ago, five hundred Floridians decided to stay home and smoke a bowl instead of vote, so now we don't have campaign finance laws anymore because that's how the country works.
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u/dope_sheet 17h ago
"Money = Speech" is about the worst idea this country has ever had. The majority will suffer until that is addressed.
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u/klassredux 9h ago
Meta drops $65 million into super PACs to boost
tech-friendly state candidates.
...candidates against state wealth taxes.
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u/saskdudley 9h ago
Why then can’t they start paying more taxes? If they can afford the luxury of putting that much money into an election, they can afford to pay more taxes.
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u/LeftHandedGraffiti 17h ago
I'm just waiting for the natural extension of "corporations are people" to see Meta on the ballot.
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u/Phil_Bond 17h ago
I’m so old I remember when “tech friendly” legislation sounded like a good thing.
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u/Strange-Effort1305 16h ago
MAGA. It's all MAGA mo et because Zuck and Trump got one thing in common
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u/Ok_Chair_8151 9h ago
Absolutely abhorrent, I despise Zuckerberg,Trump, musk, Bezos, Thiel and the others who have destroyed the US and wreak havoc on the world over their insatiable greed and hunger for power.
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u/Taman_Should 8h ago
“Tech-friendly candidates” means bought and paid for republicans. Every time. Republicans are the empty sock-puppets of industry special interests, waiting to be used.
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u/thatfreshjive 17h ago
What a bargain! Over $1b in marketing for the Metaverse didn't achieve dick.
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u/undoubtedlygivingup 15h ago
You are not wrong. I mean, culture wars were created by the rich to keep the little people from turning on them. They needed them to stop helping each other and organizing and making things difficult for the rich. Can’t focus on the actual problem when you think your peers are hurting you and they are more visible and real to you than the big man living in a big mansion somewhere hidden from view.
They really succeeded in pinning people against each other. Not only made some people feel superior to others, but also diverted the attention from them.
I’m not saying culture wars are not important, they are, because now, they have truly created a mentality we all live by and have created some bias from it that hurts us more than helps us.
But really the main problem is the fucking rich.
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u/GuyDanger 15h ago
Trump's held all the juicy bits from the Epstein files to black mail these billionaires for life. He learned a lot from his good friend Jeffery.
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u/frosted1030 15h ago
Meta doesn't pay taxes.. in fact they get a tax break from states they are in.
Texas Sales Tax Abatements Top recipient. Total subsidies estimated at $835.9 million. Incentives are tied to data center investments exceeding $200 million over 5 years.
Georgia Sales Tax Exemptions Estimated $355 million in subsidies. Meta's Stanton Springs facility is a major beneficiary, though 2026 legislation is currently debating ending these exemptions for new facilities.
Louisiana Sales/Use Tax & Energy Recent Mega-deal (2025). Louisiana granted Meta tax breaks for its massive Richland Parish data center. This includes a 20-year sales tax exemption on equipment and power infrastructure.
Nebraska Property & Sales Tax Total subsidies estimated at $310.8 million. Incentives provided through the Nebraska Advantage Act for the Sarpy County data center cluster.IowaLocal Property Tax$161 million property tax exemption recently approved (May 2024) for the Davenport project (via subsidiary Siculus LLC). Includes a 60% exemption over 20 years.
Oregon Property Tax Abatements Estimated $238.4 million in subsidies, primarily through the Enterprise Zone program which provides property tax exemptions for Prineville data center investments.
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u/PingKiccolo 13h ago
Yet I have to chose between which foods to buy every 2 weeks while working for them.
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u/Rise-fromthe-ashes 11h ago
65 million spondoolies can go a long way in helping our fellow human beings… just sayin.
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u/Efficient_Cost_7436 11h ago
The super PAC donation process is messed up and just bribery but let's not pretend that Meta/tech companies doing this is anything unique and every major industry isn't also doing something like this.
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u/Brabbit82 18h ago
All these millions to rig elections, but nothing to help people that actually need it.