Facebook has hired another top Democrat staffer, Chris Randle, as a government affairs specialist, during a year in which the social media giant has already spent $3.8 million on lobbying.
Randle joins Facebook from Capitol Hill, where he worked as legislative director to Democratic congressman Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). He previously worked for a number of Democrat politicians including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA).
This comes at the same time as Facebook’s efforts to build a coalition of free-market conservatives to defend itself against a “rush to regulate”, even as it belittles conservative concerns about social media censorship by refusing to send a representative to a congressional hearing on the subject, and appointing a team from Eric Holder’s law firm to “audit” the issue.
Former Democrat operatives are commonplace in Silicon Valley, and Facebook is no exception. As Breitbart News previously reported, Facebook counts at least 45 former staffers to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton among its workforce. This compares to just ten Facebook employees who worked for Mitt Romney, John McCain, or George W. Bush.
Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Silicon Valley is an “extremely left-leaning place”, and that this harms perceptions of tech companies among conservatives. Similarly to the issue of speech restrictions, though, his company still seems committed to making the problem worse.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
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