Google is a private company

They can do what they want

And that's the downside of a free market, kids!

sorry, a private company should not be allowed to tamper with elections

Well, depends on the tamper

If you mean literally fucking with the ballot machines, no

there is limits to what can be donated to political campaigns and such and this feels dangerous close to directly messing with voting

But if you mean changing algorithms and promoting propoganda, I don't think that's immoral tbh

However, Google and Twitter do have way too large of a presence to be treated that way

They have quite literally become the new public speaking corner

no, i mean like this: "Google’s Multicultural Marketing development head Eliana Murillo sent out an email the day after the 2016 election detailing that Google had “supported partners like Voto Latino to pay for rides to the polls in key states,” which she characterized as a “silent donation.”"

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this has nothing to do with their products

So they shipped voters to the polls?

How would you regulate that sort of thing?

idk, but should the monetary effort expanded count as a donation?

Not really. It's one private company making a deal with another

Nothing *directly* related

“Ultimately, after all was said and done, the Latino community did come out to vote, and completely surprised us,” Murillo wrote in the email. “We never anticipated that 29% of Latinos would vote for Trump. No one did. "

ironic

And making law to regulate *indirect* donations may just lead USA to tyranny

yeah? and what if it was found out a private company was paying trump voters to stay home?

i mean, its just a private company and a private citizen

I'm not saying I like it, or support it

that sounds like corruption to me

But I don't see a way of making legislation that a tyrant couldn't use to gain further power and silence opposition

“It was aimed only at one group, a group that Google cynically assumed would vote exclusively for the Democratic Party,” Carlson said. “Furthermore, this mobilization effort targeted not only the entire country but swing states vital to the Hillary campaign. This was not an exercise in civics, this was political consulting. It was in effect an in-kind contribution to the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

There are a couple of tactics to prevent Google from exercising undue political influence. Minority shareholder lawsuits, threats of anti-trust investigation, and maybe assigning a dollar figure to services donated to political parties and counting that against their contribution limits.

Like , just imagine Trump accusing google and suing them for meddling in the attention for those latino bus rides. Now imagine Hillary doing the same to, say.... McDonald's, saying that too many democrats went to eat burgers than to vote

Like if they're only allowed to donate $500,000 in cash, but they donate $500,000,000 in services that's a big problem.

well the issue with that sort is, what if you just stuff the other faction with services and say you're with them

i don't think companies should be allowed to endorse candidates. not without being labeled a political organization and therefore their efforts count as contributions to their candidate

But google was doing so indoors

So is Twitter and such

The legislation isn't going to stop this sort of thing

And may be used negatively

stop? no. But are you saying there should be no course of action?

the country is already run by corporations enough as it is

Antitrust action is the obvious answer to any company that thinks it's large enough to fix elections.

republicans are too stupid to win the culture war

republican politicians

seeing how rubio reacted to alex jones says it all