{"id":35830,"date":"2024-08-29T13:06:38","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T20:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=35830"},"modified":"2024-08-29T13:07:21","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T20:07:21","slug":"after-republican-bullying-campaign-mark-zuckerberg-is-skipping-a-400m-effort-to-help-people-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/08\/29\/after-republican-bullying-campaign-mark-zuckerberg-is-skipping-a-400m-effort-to-help-people-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"After Republican bullying campaign, Mark Zuckerberg is skipping a $400M effort to help people vote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Stephen Council<\/a>,Tech Reporter Aug 27, 2024 (SFGate.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testifies during the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis” in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2024.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/a><\/a><\/a>In the\u00a0leadup to the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $400 million to help Americans vote. \u201cVoting is the single most important thing you can do as a citizen, and it\u2019s the way that we hold our leaders accountable,\u201d\u00a0they said<\/a>\u00a0at the time. \u201cWe should be doing everything we can to make it easier for people to cast their ballots.”

What differece four yeas makes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Monday letter<\/a> to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, the billionaire CEO of Meta pledged not to donate money to support electoral infrastructure in the current cycle. He stressed the uniqueness of 2020\u2019s pandemic-year election but also basically admitted that he\u2019s ditching his effort to help people vote because of a Republican bullying campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuckerberg wrote in the letter that his 2020 donations were \u201cdesigned to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continued: \u201cStill, despite the analyses I\u2019ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another \u2014 or even appear to be playing a role. So I don\u2019t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuckerberg has faced Republican backlash over the 2020 donations since Joe Biden\u2019s election \u2014 part of a broader campaign by some parts of the party to cut election funding<\/a> and make results slower to certify<\/a>. More than two dozen<\/a> states limited or banned private election funding in response to the CEO\u2019s donations, and an \u201cEnd Zuckerbucks Act\u201d has been repeatedly introduced<\/a> in the House. As recently as July, Trump wrote<\/a> on Truth Social that \u201celection fraudsters\u201d would be sent to prison, capping off the rant: \u201cWe already know who you are. DON\u2019T DO IT!  ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the Republican anger, Zuckerberg\u2019s donations were felt, by election administrators, as a nonpartisan effort to bolster electoral safety and efficiency. An NPR story<\/a> published a month after the election, titled \u201cHow Private Money From Facebook\u2019s CEO Saved The 2020 Election,\u201d gave an on-the-ground view. A director of voting services for a Pennsylvania county called the $2.5 million grant from a Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit a \u201clifesaver,\u201d in the context of paltry federal funding. He bought 14 drop boxes for ballots and body cameras for pickup, plus paid staff to send out and count ballots. Vote-counting would\u2019ve taken over a week, but with the money, his county finished in 36 hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuckerberg and Chan\u2019s donations also funded drive-thru voting, nonpartisan voter education, polling place rentals, hazard pay for poll workers and personal protective equipment, according to the Center for Tech and Civic Life<\/a>, which disbursed the grants. Democratic-leaning counties were more likely to apply for the funding, researchers<\/a> found, but the grants went out nationwide \u2014 almost every county in South Carolina and North Dakota, two states that Trump won four years ago, got money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Monday letter to Jordan was focused mostly on the Biden administration\u2019s pressuring of Meta over COVID-19 content, and what Zuckerberg describes as \u201cregret\u201d over not being more outspoken. It also mentions a policy change, where the wait for fact-checking will no longer delay the promotion of potential disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Republican X account for members of the House Judiciary Committee celebrated<\/a> the letter, calling it a \u201cBig win for free speech.\u201d It\u2019s unclear what will come from Meta\u2019s looser moderation, so that\u2019s a dubious claim. But the letter is a big win for anyone hoping to deprive localities of election funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hear of anything happening at Meta or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEST OF SFGATE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aug 27, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Council<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TECH REPORTER<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Council is the tech reporter at SFGATE. He has covered technology and business for The Information, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and CalMatters, where his reporting won a San Francisco Press Club award.Signal: 628-204-5452
<\/strong>Email: stephen.council@sfgate.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Council,Tech Reporter Aug 27, 2024 (SFGate.com) Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testifies during the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis” in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2024.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/AFP via Getty ImagesIn the\u00a0leadup to the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35830"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35833,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35830\/revisions\/35833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}