Lobbyists exist in a lot of countries. It’s only in the US where they’re as problematic as they are.

This is such an annoying attitude. Who is against the concept of an industry being able to say “are you aware this will decimate the jobs of tens of thousands”?

Catch phrases like this, I swear, are half the reason so many people have a mind an inch deep and a mile wide.

There was at least a veneer of legitimacy there.

These days, they just do it with crypto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$Trump

Uhhh no. The White House (and other government agencies) have a well-established right to communicate with private entities. They do not have a right to coerce them. There's a blurry line between these, but not in Facebook's case, as they don't even claim they were coerced. Same with Twitter, whose lawyers testified under oath that Twitter's content moderation decisions were not coerced whatsoever.

Zuckerberg has specifically said they received requests from the government, they complied with some (as they have a right to do), declined others (as they have a right to do), none of which was under duress, and the response to non-compliance was expressions of "frustration" by the government officials.

By contrast, OpenAI's largest competitor just got kneecapped by the US government because they insisted that the US government comply with the contract terms the US government signed to literally months previously.

All you're saying is that the government under Biden talked to Meta.

Oh no! Biden sent an email to a company with a voluntary request?

That’s definitely as concerning as Trump taking bribes and then picking winners and losers in the market.