Welcome to #Wild_Wild_Wild #West!
A newsletter about the legal #shootouts that could #redefine #rules for the #internet
Right now, in an #overlooked #lawsuit in Washington state, the largest #social_media company in the #world is #telling a #judge it #doesn’t have to #follow the #law.
The company: #Facebook.
The #instigator?? of this #lawsuit is a state attorney general who appears determined to bring the legal hammer down on the “Wild West” of the #internet.
At the core of this particular legal fight is a repeated #refusal by #Facebook and #Google to #turn_over #public_records about #election_ads.
In Washington state, a unique law says digital platforms #must_give such #records to “#any_person” who asks, and about three years ago I became the first person to walk into the Seattle offices of Facebook and Google, copy of the law in hand, and ask.
Before long I also became the first person to be stiff-armed by the companies in response to this sort of request—but not the last.
My reporting on the way Facebook and Google #flout Washington state election law led to the attorney general’s current legal action. It also led to two previous legal actions against the companies by the AG that were settled out of court.
And it won me a nerdy local award from the Washington Coalition on Open Government (that, awesomely, came with a lucite obelisk twice as tall as the one I got back in 2012, when I received a somewhat fancier award for writing about a trial).
https://wildwest.substack.com/p/welcome-to-wild-west
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