A new report from consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen says that big tech companies are now the biggest lobbyists, and that the money they spend on influencing government policy has allowed them “to harm consumers, workers, and other businesses alike.”
However, while Apple is mentioned 27 times in the report, only one direct criticism is leveled at the company …
During the 2020 election cycle, Big Tech spent $124 million in lobbying and campaign contributions –– breaking its own records from past election cycles […]
This report finds that the four companies have massively expanded their Washington influence machines –– eclipsing big spenders of yesterday like Big Oil and Tobacco, and making them among the most powerful corporate interests in Washington. It details their campaign and lobbying spending while providing an overview of their other efforts to influence policy making through advertising, support of researchers, and other means.
It also notes that Apple is the only one of the four tech giants not to have a political action committee (PAC).
The charts do show that Apple has roughly doubled the number of lobbyists it uses over the past decade, but they have just one specific criticism of the Cupertino company.
That’s not to say that Apple doesn’t lobby hard for its own interests, of course. We have seen multiple examples of the company doing that, including on some controversial topics – the latest one reported just yesterday.
At the same time, Apple does often seem to get inappropriately listed alongside tech giants with very different business models, especially in regard to privacy issues. It’s not clear to me that there’s much justification for including it so prominently in this report.
