Facebook Ramps Lobbying to $230,000 in 1st Quarter

Technology companies generally adopt an anti-establishment ethos in their early days, but eventually they come to realize, like any other company, that it doesn’t hurt to be in good with Washington. So it is that Facebook shelled out $230,000 for lobbying in the first quarter of this year, almost two-thirds of what it spent all of last year — $351,000, Politico reports.

Facebook’s spending still amounts to a drop in the bucket compared with other tech companies, such as Google, which allocated $5.2 million to lobbying last year, and Microsoft, which put $6.9 million into its efforts.

The lobbying effort comes as Facebook faces increasing allegations that it’s not doing enough to protect users’ privacy. "This increase represents a continuation of our efforts to explain how our service works as well as the important actions we take to protect people who use our service,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told Politico.