Tech Billionaires Face Tricky Political Waters After Democratic Sweep

Many donated money to President Trump’s favored causes and became his allies. Now that political alignment may be a liability. 

The New York Times, Eli Tan, Theodore Schleifer and Erin Griffith, Nov. 5, 2026

President Trump met with leaders of the artificial intelligence industry 

at the White House in September.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

In September, President Trump hosted a White House luncheon to discuss artificial intelligence, flanked by some of the world’s wealthiest tech executives: Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and others. They had the president’s ear to pitch an A.I. future uninhibited by regulation or guardrails. 

For two years, it had been that easy to get what they wanted. Tech billionaires and their companies donated money to Mr. Trump’s favored causes, including the White House ballroom. The moguls posed for photos and lavished him with praise and gifts. Amazon heavily promoted a movie about Melania Trump. 

Then on Tuesday, the American public delivered a rebuke of the tech industry’s agenda. Overnight, the billionaires’ political alignment with the president may have become a liability. 

Democrats, riding a wave of anti-tech sentiment, including distrust of tech leaders, opposition to data centers and fears of job loss fueled by A.I., will soon control Congress and prominent state governments. In victory speeches around the country, they made tech titans avatars of inequality and corruption that plagued the Republican Party in the election cycle. 

That puts some tech executives in a trickier position. It may be harder for them to make progress on their goals of A.I. dominance. Many saw their net worths drop on Thursday as investors sold out of A.I. and chip stocks, driving the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5 percent. And some may even find themselves under investigation. 

“You guys aren’t the actual leaders of the Valley. You’re the mis-leaders of the Valley,” said Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn who is one of the country’s top Democratic donors and a leader of the tech industry’s progressive wing. “It will no longer be that these MAGA voices in the Valley are in charge.” 

Silicon Valley’s shift to the right began in 2024, when Mr. Musk and others went all-in on Mr. Trump, visiting Mar-a-Lago and taking up powerful positions in his administration. New political groups supporting niche interests like cryptocurrency spent enormous sums to promote their agendas. 

Guests at Mr. Trump’s inauguration last year included, from right in the front row,

Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Mark

Zuckerberg. Credit...Ricky Carioti

This time, the money was even bigger. Among the 20 biggest donors in the mid terms were tech billionaires, including the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. 

An Andreessen-backed cryptocurrency group, Fairshake, spent tens of millions on a mission to defeat Sherrod Brown, the Democrat running for Senate in Ohio. Mr. Musk poured over $474 million into Republican super PACs, including hundreds of millions to support Ken Paxton, the Texas Republican nominee for the Senate. And a Musk-endorsed billionaire ran for governor in Ohio.

Mr. Musk’s results, said Rohan Patel, a former Tesla vice president reporting to Mr. Musk who now works in Democratic politics, are a “total repudiation of his ugly brand of politics.” 

Neil Malhotra, a professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, said tech leaders had mostly been acting out of self-preservation. 

“They understand when you have a president who is willing to use the state to intervene in the economy, it’s smart business practice to be on good terms with the administration,” he said. 

Dr. Malhotra noted that most business leaders would rather that the government not move too far from the center in either direction. After the 2024 election, “Republicans overinterpreted their mandate,” he said. 

Now, tech leaders may find their business dealings under investigation. “They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted on social media on Tuesday. 

The tech titans appeared triumphant in one race: A proposed billionaire tax in California is on the cusp of being defeated. Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, and other tech investors and founders poured about $330 million into efforts to vanquish the measure, which called for a one-time 5 percent tax. A companion measure that would effectively ban all future wealth taxes also appeared likely to pass. 

Still, anti-billionaire and anti-tech sentiment was prominent in victory speeches around the country. Mr. Paxton’s opponent in Texas, James Talarico, whom Mr. Hoffman backed with nearly $17 million, compared his race to David versus Goliath. 

“We just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor,” he said. He called out “the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians.” This election was a referendum on their power, too, he said. 

Roy Cooper, a Democrat who won a Senate seat in North Carolina, said in his victory speech on Tuesday that “we told Washington loud and clear that North Carolinians will always matter more than the billionaires and the insiders.” 

The left-wing victor in Michigan’s Senate race, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, said he would be “taking on the corporations and the billionaires, special interests who’ve rigged the system against us for far too long.” 

And Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who won re-election in Georgia, called out “the titans of Silicon Valley,” who “dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they’re creating risks human extinction.”

Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, called out “the titans of Silicon

Valley” while speaking on election night at an Atlanta hotel. Credit...Nicole Craine

for The New York Times

Late Tuesday, as the results of the election rolled in, the hosts of the tech podcast “All-In,” who are tech investors, expressed surprise and disappointment in a livestream at the possibility that Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, could lose his bid for a fourth term. 

The tech industry had assumed that after Mr. Abbott won, he would lift a moratorium on data centers in Texas and that construction would begin again, the “All-In” hosts said. Pro-business Texas is the second-largest state for data center projects, representing roughly 30 percent of the planned capacity for 2028, according to SemiAnalysis, a research group. 

Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat who beat Mr. Abbott, has said she would keep the moratorium going until the state could pass legislation around data centers, delaying projects from coming online for many months. 

Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico campaigning in San Antonio on Sunday.
Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Chamath Palihapitiya, an “All-In” host, connected the slowdown or halt of data center projects to the performance of A.I.-related stocks and, ultimately, the fate of the U.S. economy. He warned of a recession, noting that losing the computing power of new data centers was the “single most effective way to tank the market.” 

Mr. Musk, who donated $5 million to Mr. Abbott’s campaign, posted on social media after the results: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.” 

Meta fined $25bn for 'lies' over user data privacy

BBC, Kali Hays, 21 October 2026 

Meta has been hit with numerous legal fines this year

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has been hit with the largest ever fine against it for its business practices. 

A judge in New Mexico on Wednesday ordered the company to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) following a two-week trial earlier this year that found it had spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data. 

"The lies extend beyond Facebook's data practices as well," the judge said, adding they went to "the heart of Facebook's core business practices". 

Meta's head lawyer CJ Mahoney said the ruling made it "all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico". The company intends to appeal, a move Mahoney said will be successful. 

The fine is the largest to date against Meta, which has either been fined or agreed to settle several other lawsuits this year, including an $18bn deal with California over child safety. 

New Mexico's lawsuit stemmed from the role of Meta, then still doing business as Facebook, in what became known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. 

That firm utilised data and information from millions of Facebook users as part of its work in political consulting, including on work related to the 2016 US Presidential election, which saw Donald Trump elected for the first time. 

New Mexico had also accused Meta of intentionally misleading the public on how it benefitted from content that included hate speech, and how such rules against it were enforced. The jury found the company had intentionally misled the public on those claims, too. 

Meta disputed those accusations. "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online," Mahoney added. 

Lawyers for New Mexico sued the company over many statements Meta executives had made over the years that user data was never shared with or accessed by third parties without a user's permission, when in reality it had been. 

They claimed that the entire population of the state, roughly two million people, was impacted by Meta's dishonesty regarding the way it controlled user data. A jury found that Meta had violated state laws more than 40 million times. 

"For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law," New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said on Wednesday. 

"Today's result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable." 

The state lawyers sought up to $40bn in fines against Meta. Meta had argued anything beyond $3.4bn would be unconstitutional. 

Judge Francis Mathew on Wednesday was direct in his decision to fine Meta an amount roughly equal to its profits each quarter. 

He said Meta's violations of law and misrepresentations to the public about how their Facebook data was used and shared were "willful" and spanned "more than 11 years", stretching from 2010 to 2021. 

Communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were "designed to mislead the public", Judge Mathew wrote in his order. 

While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine. 

It follows a $5bn fine levied by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 against the company over its data privacy practices. 

New Mexico has been one of Meta's most notable adversaries in court. The state this year also fined Meta almost $1bn for misleading the public about the safety of its social media platforms for children. 

The judge overseeing that lawsuit ultimately compared Meta to an industrial polluter of the air, with its form of pollution being "the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children". 

As large as the fines against Meta are, the company is spending much more on infrastructure as it works to catch up with other tech companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. 

Zuckerberg said during a call with financial analysts that Meta's consumer-focused AI tool Muse was already being used by 10 million people. 

"Growing Muse to serve billions of people is both our mission and our strategy," Zuckerberg said. 

To that end, Meta expects to spend at least $135bn this year on mostly AI projects, but could spend up to $145bn. 

The company is spending so much on AI that it reported negative cash flow of more than $2bn - an apparent first for Meta since it listed on the public stock market 14 years ago, according to a BBC review of its past financial documents. 

Cash flow represents the money a company retains after paying for operations and investments. So, Meta is now spending more than it brings in, even as it brings in more money than ever. 

Meta's revenue increased 26% for July to September compared to a year ago, hitting $64.5bn. Its profits also tripled to $9.8bn. 

Still, the company intends to spend more on AI investments. Meta's chief financial officer Susan Li announced a new stock split on the call, in which existing Meta shareholders will receive one new share on non-voting stock. 

Li said the new class of stock was not yet intended for one specific investment, but she alluded to ongoing costs related to AI and said the company could use "more funding flexibility" next year.

Elon Musk breaks Twitter silence with photo with Pope

France24 –AFP, 2 July 2022 

The location and details of the meeting were not specified Handout
ELON MUSK'S TWITTER ACCOUNT/AFP

Rome (AFP) – American billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday broke his silence on the Twitter social media site, which he plans to buy, posting a picture of himself with Pope Francis. 

"Honored to meet @Pontifex yesterday," Musk tweeted next to a photograph of him and four of his children with the Argentinian-born pontiff. 

The location and details of the meeting were not specified by the Tesla and SpaceX boss, while the Vatican did not comment on his private audience with Pope Francis. 

Last week Musk said that his $44-billion move to take over Twitter remained held up by "very significant" questions about the number of fake users on the social network. 

The richest man in the world added then that there were also questions about Twitter's debt and whether shareholders will vote for the deal.

Google agrees to pay for beefed-up Wikipedia service

Yahoo – AFP, June 22, 2022 

Google has agreed to pay for ramped-up Wikipedia services, part of a growing trend for the US tech giant to strike commercial deals with other web companies. 

The Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that oversees the online encyclopedia, said Google was the first paying customer for its commercial venture Wikimedia Enterprise, which it launched last year. 

The Internet Archive, a non-profit that runs a site called the Wayback Machine that saves snapshots of websites and is used to fix Wikipedia links, will be offered the commercial services for free. 

"We're thrilled to be working with them both as our longtime partners," said Wikimedia's Lane Becker in a statement on Tuesday. 

Wikipedia, one of the world's most visited websites, is free to use, updated by volunteers and relies on donations to keep afloat.

The new commercial venture will not change that arrangement for individual users, the foundation said. 

Google uses material from the site for its "knowledge panel" -- a sidebar that accompanies the main search results. 

The source of the information is not always shown, a practice that had sparked complaints from Wikimedia. 

The foundation said its new product gave customers a "feed of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects" beyond what is available to the public. 

The product was "designed to make it easier for these entities to package and share Wikimedia content", it said in a statement. 

Google has previously given money to Wikipedia through donations and grants but the new deal puts their relationship on a more formal commercial footing. 

"We have long supported the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of our shared goals of expanding knowledge and information access for people everywhere," said Google's Tim Palmer. 

The foundation's statement did not reveal the value of the Google contract. 

Google has long had a troubled relationship with other websites -- it even attempted to create a rival to Wikipedia called Knol, though the venture failed. 

But the company has changed tack in recent years and is increasingly making deals, particularly with media companies. 

French regulators and Google ended a years-long dispute on Tuesday by agreeing a framework for the US firm to pay news outlets for content. 

Google said it had already made deals with hundreds of news outlets across Europe, Agence France-Presse among them.

Apple allows other payment methods in dating apps: ACM

DutchNews, June 13, 2022 

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Dutch consumer and markets association ACM says Apple has now changed its unfair conditions, and will allow different methods of payment in Dutch dating apps, thereby meeting official requirements. 

Apple earlier failed to meet the agency’s requirement that it accept alternative payment systems by the March deadline and has been ordered to pay a € 50 million fine. 

The ACM told Apple last August it had to adjust its conditions for inclusion in the Dutch App Store so that dating app providers can use payment systems other than Apple’s own. 

Apple then came up with alternativeconditions stating that dating app providers must develop a completely new app if they want to be able to use an alternative payment system. This too was inadequate, the ACM said, in February. 

‘We want everyone to be able to reap the benefits of the digital economy,’ ACM chairman Martijn Snoep said on Monday. ‘In the digital economy, powerful companies have a special responsibility to keep the market fair and open. Apple avoided that responsibility, and abused its dominant position vis-à-vis dating-app providers.’ The dispute about the fine is still ongoing.

Facebook puts Zeewolde data centre plan on hold after protests

DutchNews, March 30, 2022 

An artist’s impression of the site. Illustration: Gemeente Zeewolde

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to stop work on setting up a massive data centre near the Flevoland town of Zeewolde, much to the delight of locals.

A majority of MPs on Tuesday urged ministers to stop the construction and one hour later, Meta said it was putting the project on hold. 

The dispute over the local council’s green light for the massive data centre took a new twist earlier this month when a political party opposing the project won an absolute majority in the local election. 

‘I never expected things would move so quickly,’ said Tom Zonneveld, leader of Leefbaar Zeewolde, after the Meta announcement. 

Zeewolde council had voted to amend the zoning plan at the end of December, clearing the way for the data centre to be built. 

However, part of the land is owned by national government which which still had to give its approval for the project. 

The data centre, or hyperscale, is controversial for several reasons, not least of which that it is being build on agricultural ground. There is also concern about the massive amount of energy needed to power the centre – the equivalent of a small city of 460,000 people. 

Global tax deal backed by 130 nations

Yahoo – AFP, Jürgen HECKER, July 1, 2021 

US digital giants are the main targets of the new tax

A total of 130 countries have agreed a global tax reform ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share wherever they operate, the OECD said on Thursday, but some EU states refused to sign up. 

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a statement that global companies, including US behemoths Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple would be taxed at a rate of at least 15 percent once the deal is implemented. 

The new tax regime will add some $150 billion to government coffers globally once it comes into force, which the OECD said it hoped would be in 2023. 

"The framework updates key elements of the century-old international tax system, which is no longer fit for purpose in a globalised and digitalised 21st century economy," the OECD said. 

The formal agreement follows an endorsement by the G7 group of wealthy nations last month, and negotiations now move to a meeting of the G20 group of developed and emerging economies on July 9-10 in Venice, Italy. 

US President Joe Biden said the latest deal "puts us in striking distance of full global agreement to halt the race to the bottom for corporate taxes." 

Germany, another backer of the tax reform, hailed it as a "colossal step towards tax justice", and France said it was "the most important tax agreement in a century". 

British finance minister Rishi Sunak, whose country holds the G7 presidency, said "the fact that 130 countries across the world, including all of the G20, are now on board, marks a further step in our mission to reform global tax". 

'In everyone's interest'

But EU low-tax countries Ireland and Hungary declined to sign up to the agreement reached in the OECD framework, the organisation said, highlighting lingering divisions on global taxation. 

Both countries are part of a group of EU nations also including Luxembourg and Poland that have relied on low tax rates to attract multinationals and build their economies. 

Ireland, the EU home to tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple, has a corporate tax rate of just 12.5 percent. 

Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has warned that the new rules could see Ireland lose 20 percent of its corporate revenue. 

On Thursday, Donohoe said Ireland still "broadly supports" the deal, but not the 15-percent tax floor. 

The tax plan got a much-needed boost from Joe Bidens's administration

"There is much to finalise before a comprehensive agreement is reached", he said, adding that Ireland would "constructively engage" in further discussions. 

Also expressing concerns is Switzerland -- known for its banking secrecy laws -- which said it would support the measures despite "major reservations" and that it hoped the interests of "small, innovative countries" be taken into account. 

An agreement for the implementation of the plan is planned for October. 

Nine of the 139 participants in the talks have so far not signed on to the agreement. 

But China, whose position was being closely watched as it offers tax incentives to key sectors, endorsed the agreement. 

"It is in everyone's interest that we reach a final agreement among all Inclusive Framework Members as scheduled later this year," said OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann. 

"This package does not eliminate tax competition, as it should not, but it does set multilaterally agreed limitations on it," Cormann said, adding that "it also accommodates the various interests across the negotiating table, including those of small economies and developing jurisdictions". 

'More equitable' global economy 

Finance chiefs have characterised a minimum tax as necessary to stem competition between countries over who can offer multinationals the lowest rate. 

For Biden, a global tax agreement will help maintain US competitiveness since he has proposed hiking domestic corporate taxes to pay for an infrastructure and jobs programme with a price tag of around $2 trillion. 

Biden -- whose tax plans face a potentially uphill battle in Congress -- hailed an "important step in moving the global economy forward to be more equitable for workers and middle class families in the United States and around the world." 

He noted that those nations who signed up make up more than 90 percent of the world's economy. 

The OECD's statement said the package "will provide much-needed support to governments needing to raise necessary revenues" to fix their budgets and invest in measures to back the post-Covid recovery. 

Oxfam, a charity, meanwhile said that the deal fell short of a tax level needed to give poorer countries a sufficient share of additional tax revenue. 

Calling the deal "skewed-to-the-rich and completely unfair", Oxfam said that signatories had missed a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a profoundly more equal world".

Facebook to close Irish units at center of tax dispute

Rfi.fr – AFP, 30 December 2020 

Facebook said its Irish subsidiary at the heart of a dispute on shifting profits
 to avoid taxes has been closed, with the assets brought back to the California
giant DENIS CHARLET AFP/File

Washington (AFP) - Facebook confirmed Wednesday it was closing its Irish subsidiaries at the center of a dispute on profit shifting to avoid taxes in the United States. 

The California tech giant acknowledged the winding down of Facebook Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company amid a dispute with US tax authorities, which claimed the company owed billions in taxes by improperly shifting profits offshore. 

A Facebook spokesperson said the move was "part of a change that best aligns with our operating structure" and that the holdings of the three subsidiaries were "distributed to its US parent company." 

The closing was previously reported by the Times of London and other media. 

Facebook has disputed the claims from US tax authorities seeking some $9 billion for allegedly undervaluing intellectual property assets used by the social network. 

But it noted that these assets were repatriated in July in a move which "best aligns corporate structure with where we expect to have most of our activities and people." 

Facebook says it has paid more than $11 billion globally in income tax over the past three years and that its effective tax rate over the last five years exceeds 20 percent. 

The news comes amid stalled negotiations on a new global tax treaty which would allocate profits of multinational firms including tech giants and efforts by some countries to unilaterally impose digital taxes based on revenues. 

In November, some 75 major tech players, including Google and Facebook, backed a French initiative committing them to making a "fair tax contribution" in countries where they operate.

Related Article:

Google to stop using ‘double Irish, Dutch sandwich’ tax dodge: Reuters

Private psychotherapy notes leaked in major Finnish hack

Yahoo – AFP, 26 October 2020

The confidential treatment records of tens of thousands of psychotherapy patients in Finland have been hacked and some leaked online, in what the interior minister said Monday was "a shocking act." 

Many victims of the hack reported receiving emails with a demand for 200 euros
($236) in bitcoin to prevent the contents of their discussions with therapists
being made public. (Nicolas Asfouri)

Distressed patients flooded victim support services over the weekend as Finnish police revealed hackers accessed records belonging to private company Vastaamo, which runs 25 therapy centres across Finland. 

Thousands have filed police complaints over the breach, they added. 

Many patients reported receiving emails with a demand for 200 euros ($236) in bitcoin to prevent the contents of their discussions with therapists being made public. 

"The Vastaamo data breach is a shocking act which hits all of us deep down," Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo wrote on her website on Monday. 

Finland must be a country where "help for mental health issues is available and it can be accessed without fear." 

Ministers met for crisis talks this weekend, with further emergency discussions tabled for the coming week over the unprecedented data breach. 

"We are investigating an aggravated security breach and aggravated extortion, among other charges," Robin Lardot, the director of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation, told a news conference at the weekend. 

Lardot added that they believed the number of patients whose records had been compromised numbered in the tens of thousands. 

On Monday evening, Vastaamo said it had fired its CEO, Ville Tapio, after an internal enquiry discovered that he had concealed a March 2019 data breach from the board and the firm's parent company. 

The firm admitted flaws in the security of its customer data, "which allowed criminals to break into the database up until March 2019," Vastaamo said in a statement. 

The company's owner, PTK Midco Oy, on Monday launched court proceedings "in relation to its May 2019 purchase of Vastaamo," the statement added. 

'Justifiably worried' 

Security experts reported that a 10-gigabyte data file containing private notes between at least 2,000 patients and their therapists had appeared on websites on the so-called dark web. 

The hack, which targeted some of society's most vulnerable including children, has caused widespread shock in the Nordic country of 5.5 million, with ministers gathering on Sunday to discuss how to support the patients whose sensitive data had been leaked. 

"It is absolutely clear that people are justifiably worried not only about their own security and health but that of their close ones, too," Ohisalo told reporters late on Sunday. 

On Monday, authorities launched a website for victims of the cyberattack, offering advice and telling them not to pay the ransom demand. 

"Do not communicate with the extortionist, the data have most likely already been leaked elsewhere," the "Data Leak Help" site said. 

Mental health and victim support charities reported being overwhelmed with calls from distressed people fearing that their intimate conversations with their therapists would be publicly released. 

Nothing 'to be ashamed of' 

One of the recipients of a blackmail threat, the former MP Kirsi Piha, tweeted a screenshot of the ransom message along with a defiant reply to the hackers. 

"Up yours! Seeking help is never something to be ashamed of," Piha wrote. 

"I've seen a lot, but I haven't seen this," Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at data security firm F-Secure said in a statement. 

"I don't think there's a crime in our criminal history which would have more victims than this one." 

Hypponen, an internationally renowned cybersecurity specialist, said the perpetrator used the alias "ransom_man", and said he was only aware of one other patient blackmail case, where a cosmetic surgery clinic in Florida had a smaller amount of data stolen in 2019. 

On Monday, Finland's social care regulator said in a statement it was investigating Vastaamo's practices, including how well patients were kept informed of the breach. 

Meanwhile, the head of the state digital services agency DVV, Kimmo Rousku, said that the cyberattack could have been avoided if Vastaamo had used better encryption. 

DVV published a checklist on Monday for firms to make sure their digital security is in order. 

"Management needs to wake up," Rousku told public broadcaster Yle. 

A phone line offering legal advice had also been set up, the country's consumer authority announced.

Unilever to stop advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in US

Yahoo – AFP, June 26, 2020

Consumer products giant Unilever said it would pause ads on Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter through 2020 (AFP Photo/LEX VAN LIESHOUT)

The Hague (AFP) - Consumer giant Unilever, home to brands including Ben and Jerry's and Marmite, said Friday it will stop advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in the US until the end of 2020 due to the "polarized election period" there.

The Anglo-Dutch firm joined a growing list of brands set to stop buying ads on Facebook over the social media titan's perceived failure to crack down on hate speech and incitements to violence.

"We have taken the decision to stop advertising on @Facebook , @Instagram & @Twitter in the US," Unilever said in a post on Twitter.

"The polarized atmosphere places an increased responsibility on brands to build a trusted & safe digital ecosystem. Our action starts now until the end of 2020."

A Unilever spokeswoman said that the company had committed to engage with internet companies "but there is much more to be done, especially in the areas of divisiveness and hate speech during this polarized election period in the U.S."

"Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society. We will be monitoring ongoing and will revisit our current position if necessary," the spokeswoman told AFP.

US Telecoms giant Verizon announced on Thursday that it was "pausing" its advertising on Facebook, the latest company to do so after the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called for the boycott as part of the "Stop the Hate for Profit" campaign.

The Unilever move however goes beyond Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram to take in Twitter.

Related Article:

Dutch brands talk to Facebook about hate speech, but none have yet pulled ads

France refuses coronavirus funds to Amazon in labour dispute

Rfi.fr – Yahoo, 4 May 2020

Following last month's court ruling, Amazon shut down its sites in France AFP/File

Paris (AFP) -France's labour ministry said Monday that it denied a request by Amazon for emergency funds to pay employees during the coronavirus crisis, after the US giant shut its warehouses over a court order to sell only essential items.

The ministry said Amazon France asked last Thursday to benefit from coronavirus crisis funds that cover about 84 percent of net pay for workers facing temporary layoffs because of a drop in business.

Amazon France confirmed it sought the funds to cover salaries for some 10,000 employees at its six main distribution sites in the country.

The online retailer has been locked in a battle with labour unions which say not enough was done to mitigate contagion risk for staff working in close proximity to process a flood of orders amid the nationwide lockdown, which saw traditional shops shuttered.

Last month, an appeals court upheld a ruling that sharply curtailed Amazon's operations and ordered management to review safety measures. The court said only digital products, office equipment, groceries, medical and personal care products could be delivered in the meantime.

But Amazon said it was impossible to comply with the order, and completely shut down the six sites from mid-April until May 5, though it maintained full pay for employees.

"The recent decision by the Court of Versailles has obviously had an impact on our French operations... As a result, we filed for the help that other companies in France have benefited from," the company said in a statement.

"Our logistics operations are technically complex and the court's fine of 100,000 euros ($109,000) for any infraction means that even accidental shipping of non-authorised products, on the order of 0.1 percent of the total, could lead to over one billion euros of fines per week," it said.

Unions called Amazon's request for employment aid "absolutely scandalous," and accused the firm of getting around the court order by fulfilling French orders from its other warehouses in Europe.

Dozens of employees had staged walkouts at several sites before the ruling to demand better workplace protection during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Amazon reported last week that despite a surge in orders worldwide because of virus lockdowns, its profit dropped 29 percent in the first quarter of this year, to $2.5 billion, because of COVID-19 expenses, including measures for "keeping employees safe".

The company is in the process of recruiting some 175,000 more employees to cope with surging demand.

Amazon vows to act on price-gouging on coronavirus goods

Yahoo – AFP, March 5, 2020

About half of Amazon sales come from third-party vendors as part of the
company's online "marketplace."

Amazon pledged Thursday to take steps to fight price gouging after a US senator complained of "unjustifiably high prices" on hand sanitizers and surgical masks to protect against coronavirus infections.

The US retail giant responded to a letter from Senator Ed Markey, who wrote that Amazon appeared to be profiting from panic buying related to the epidemic.

"We agree with Senator Markey -- there is no place for price gouging on Amazon and that's why our teams are monitoring our store 24/7 and have already removed tens of thousands of offers for attempted price gouging," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email.

"We are disappointed that bad actors are attempting to take advantage of this global health crisis and, in addition to removing these offers, we are terminating accounts."

About half of Amazon sales come from third-party vendors as part of the company's online "marketplace."

Markey questioned Amazon's vigilance after a series of media reports highlighted markups on some items of as much as 2,000 percent, with one report indicating the company's enforcement of its fair-pricing policy as "haphazard."

"No one should be allowed to reap a windfall from fear and human suffering," Markey said Wednesday. "I'm calling on Amazon to stop and prevent coronavirus-inspired price gouging."