Tech Transparency Project

TTP - Inside Meta’s Spin Machine on Kids and Social Media As Meta comes under growing pressure over its impact on teens, it’s using a range of tactics to move the public narrative in a friendlier direction.

These strategies help Meta build a counter-narrative to the idea that its platforms are harming young users—and fend off attempts to regulate its platforms.

Read TTP's full report here: www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/ins...

Meta has also funded academic research that fosters a more benign view of IG. The topics of study include tech-driven mental health interventions, how social media platforms can enable women entrepreneurs, and the role of Instagram communities in promoting daily fitness activity.

Meta has at times framed these “labs” as a separate organization to regulators and others, leaving the impression that an independent entity has signed off on its products.

Meta also created a unit called the Trust, Transparency and Control Labs that publishes reports about research and consultations that went into its kid-focused efforts, including IG Teen Accounts, the Messenger Kids app, and the opening of the Horizon Worlds metaverse to teens.

The National PTA—one of several parent and child safety groups Meta funds—took part in the rollout of Instagram Teen Accounts, collaborated with Meta on a parent’s guide to IG, and held a series of Meta-sponsored events across the country to promote the IG teen features.

The tactics include cultivating a network of paid child advocacy groups that go to bat for Meta in PR campaigns, using a social research “lab” to publish reports in support of its kid-focused products, and funding academic research highlighting positive use cases for Instagram.

TTP - Inside Meta’s Spin Machine on Kids and Social Media As Meta comes under growing pressure over its impact on teens, it’s using a range of tactics to move the public narrative in a friendlier direction.

NEW: Meta is using a range of influence tactics to counter growing concerns that social media platforms like Instagram can be harmful to teens’ health and safety. www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/ins...

Google Finds Workaround for Lobbying Rules That Omits Big Bosses It was the end of 2018, and Google’s leaders were tired of being Number One.

“On the face of it, it’s wrong,” William Luneburg Jr., a University of Pittsburgh law professor who co-edited a comprehensive lobbying manual published by the American Bar Association told @bloomberg.com. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Google said the decrease in its lobbying numbers was due to multiple reasons, including a restructuring of the company’s government affairs operation and the pandemic. It said the subsidiary “aligns with how other companies report and fully complies with disclosure laws.”

TTP - Google ‘Shell Game’ Shields Executive Lobbying from Public View Google once ranked as the country’s top corporate spender on lobbying, but then its numbers dropped sharply. A little-known legal strategy played a role.

Under the new model, Google’s reported lobbying expenses fell by millions of dollars, and it dropped out of the top 20 corporate lobbying spenders for the first time in nearly a decade. www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/goo...

Now that Google’s parent company had no in-house lobbyists, the company reasoned, it no longer had to register at all, according to current and former employees. And, because Google’s execs didn’t technically work for the subsidiary, they wouldn’t have to disclose the cost of their lobbying, either.

TTP - Google ‘Shell Game’ Shields Executive Lobbying from Public View Google once ranked as the country’s top corporate spender on lobbying, but then its numbers dropped sharply. A little-known legal strategy played a role.

For most of its existence, Google included the value of any lobbying by its senior execs in its disclosures, as most companies do. In early 2020, however, Google quietly moved its in-house lobbyists into a new subsidiary, Google Client Services LLC. www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/goo...

NEW: a TTP report reveals how Google—which at one time spent the most on lobbying of any U.S. corporation—employed an obscure legal strategy that reduced the amount of lobbying spending it discloses under federal law by removing executive lobbying from disclosures.

Now, Texas regulators are engaged in an implementation process with the public and industry stakeholders to determine exactly how and when these emergency shutoffs will occur—and other states are watching.

Memories of deadly winter blackouts haunt the Texas data center boom A newly passed law in Texas requires emergency shutoff switches for data centers, including the massive $500 billion AI supercomputer backed by President Trump.

While the bill was still under consideration, the VP of state policy for the industry group Data Center Coalition warned of the “significant consequences” of even a “momentary interruption” to data centers. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

ERCOT ‘Kill Switch’ for Data Centers Passes in Texas House The bill would also allow ERCOT, which oversees the Texas power grid, to make more accurate demand projections.

This prediction appeared to light a fire under many Texas lawmakers, who earlier this year passed a bill that would require data centers be built with shutoff switches that grid operators can control remotely during an emergency. insider.govtech.com/texas/news/e...

Texas electricity demand could nearly double in six years, grid operator predicts The prediction by ERCOT reflects a new way of counting future demand and a spike in requests to connect to the grid from large power users.

In the three years since TTP published that report, a number of AI data centers have joined the crypto miners in calling the Texas grid their home. The state’s energy authority now expects grid capacity to double by 2030. www.texastribune.org/2024/06/20/t...

TTP - Cryptocurrency Miners' Sweetheart Deal with Texas Threatens an Already Fragile Grid Miners Say: “Trust Us.”

A 2022 TTP report detailed how Texas crypto miners were cashing in on deals that allowed them to resell power (they bought at hugely discounted rates) back to the grid at a massive markup in times of crisis -- leaving Texas ratepayers to foot the bill. www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/cry...

Crypto miners and data centers got sweetheart energy deals in Texas, premised on the idea that boosted grid capacity could serve the state by being redirected in times of crisis.

But now that a new law is set to make some emergency shutoffs mandatory, the industry has concerns.

Big Tech Funding Database A Flourish data visualization by Tech Transparency Project

Explore the latest data here: public.flourish.studio/visualisatio...

ICYMI: TTP recently published an update to our Big Tech Funding Database, which serves as a one-stop-shop for information on what third-party groups receive funding from Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.

Big Tech Funding Database A Flourish data visualization by Tech Transparency Project

The findings come alongside an update to TTP’s Tech Funding Database, which provides info on whether orgs have received funding from Big Tech firms. The latest update adds company disclosures from 2021 to the most recent available—find it here: public.flourish.studio/visualisatio...

It's unclear if Google stopped funding these organizations or is simply seeking to hide its support for them. However, either scenario suggests Google is taking further steps to distance itself from DEI programs.

Google has already removed references to DEI from its annual report filed with the SEC and ended diversity-related hiring goals. Like other Big Tech companies and executives, Google donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

TTP - Google’s Disappearing DEI Groups Google contributes to an array of nonprofit groups. This year the company dropped dozens tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion from its list.

In early 2025, Google removed over 200 groups from the list of 3rd-party orgs it supports, the company’s biggest purge in at least five years. The largest category of removals is related to DEI, a concept that has come under attack by the Trump admin. www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/goo...

NEW: Google has sharply reduced its support for nonprofit groups devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion, in what appears to be another sign that the company is falling in line with President Trump’s anti-DEI crusade, TTP has found.

Concluding their report, @everytown.bsky.social recommends further steps for YouTube to take, including devoting more resources to enforcement, focusing on some of the top offenders, using Everytown data in its machine learning, and being more transparent about violations and bans.

The analysis found that while “YouTube’s revised enforcement approach is making a significant dent in the problem,” “thousands of videos that violate YouTube’s firearms guidelines were still available on the platform.”

Everytown’s latest report provides an audit of whether YouTube is enforcing its policy banning links to gun sales. Although the policy is longstanding, Everytown points to indicators from last year which signaled a renewed commitment from YouTube to actually enforce it.

Following that letter—and previous advocacy from Everytown—YouTube announced in June 2024 that it would make several changes to what gun content its under-18 users could to see. Yet, a TTP spot check, conducted over 6 weeks later, found serious gaps in YouTube’s enforcement.