SOMO - Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Responsible Divestment Principles | Launch. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Oil, gas, and coal extraction must end. But the defining question of the energy transition is not only whether extraction stops. It is who shapes the exit, who carries the costs, who is protected, and...

It's all about the 'how' we phase out; people affected by fossil fuels must be at the centre of the exit process.

That's why we've developed international principles for responsible divestment from fossil fuels. Hope you can join us for the launch webinar:
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Phasing out fossil fuels in a *just* way will be crucial. We've developed principles for responsible divestment to make sure people are at the centre for the exit process.

We'll be launching them in a webinar this month, hope you can join us:
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

We need to phase out fossil fuels, with people and justice at the centre of responsible divestment.

Together with AIDA and SDN, we’ll officially launch the International Principles on Responsible Divestment from Fossil Fuels on Tuesday 24 March - 3pm CET.

Join us at us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Governments worldwide, rather than confronting oligarchs and monopolists who are profiting obscenely from a burning planet, are granting them control over political power.

We stand in solidarity with Greenpeace against corporate intimidation. We will not be silenced!

Big Tech companies have put a lot of effort and money into making EU efforts to regulate them fail.

💰 Research by @somoamsterdam.bsky.social showed that Big Tech lobbying in 2025 exceeded that of the finance, energy and chemicals sectors, framing the EU's DMA, DSA and AI Act in their favour.

The United States: Birthplace of the Big Tech lobby playbook - SOMO What sets Big Tech’s US strategy apart is the immense size of its lobbying resources and its unparalleled enmeshment with the Trump administration.

The level of entanglement between Trump and a corporate sector is unprecedented. That's what we saw too in our analysis of Big Tech's lobbying in the US - and around the world.

www.somo.nl/the-united-s...

Thanks for sharing!

‘Divide and conquer’: U.S. businesses bully Brussels into weakening supply chain rules The EU’s flagship corporate sustainability law has been massively scaled back following industry pushback. Leaked documents shared with Follow the Money reveal how a secretive U.S. lobby piled pressur...

@ec.europa.eu folds before covert corporate U.S. lobbying against due diligence law. Leaked documents shared by @somoamsterdam.bsky.social reveal secretive 'Competitiveness Roundtable' strategy aimed at mobilising resistance to CSDDD across all three EU institutions. www.ftm.eu/articles/was...

Recoding the system: how to counter the Big Tech Lobby Playbook - SOMO Taking power back from Big Tech corporate giants means disrupting their global lobby playbook, which is vital to begin resetting the system.

Big Tech’s lobby playbook has allowed it to shape laws in its favour.

Taking power back won't be easy; the antidote must be dynamic and creative.

In our recent series, we suggest 8 counter-strategies to disrupt its playbook:
www.somo.nl/recoding-the...

Watchdog organisations issue call to withdraw Aura Salla’s appointment as Digital Omnibus rapporteur | Corporate Europe Observatory Aura Salla, a former Meta lobbyist who is now an MEP, was appointed rapporteur of the Digital Omnibus. In an open letter, seven watchdog organisations are calling on the ITRE coordinators to withdraw ...

📣 Together with other watchdog organisations we have today issued a call to withdraw Aura Salla’s appointment as Digital Omnibus rapporteur.

Appointing a former Meta lobbyist to oversee the revision of digital regulations raises serious concerns regarding the undue influence of Big Tech.

🧵

Audited ≠ Ethical: how fashion brands mislead consumers - SOMO “No forced labour”, “a safe working environment”, and “fair pay”: these are promises clothing brands readily use in advertisements to reassure consumers seeking clean clothing. But what are these clai...

Check out this new analysis from @cleanclothes.bsky.social and @somoamsterdam.bsky.social on the scam that are audits.

www.somo.nl/audited-ethi...

Social auditing enables worker abuse. Market authorities can put an end to it Emma Vogt is the urgent appeal co-ordinator at the Clean Clothes Campaign Consumers and workers are being failed by weak regulation around labour conditions in the fashion industry

In @sustainableviews.bsky.social today: our op-ed by @emmavogt.bsky.social about the need for market authorities to intervene in the common practice of fashion brands to make claims about labour conditions based on unreliable commercial audits: www.sustainableviews.com/social-audit...

Audited ≠ Ethical: how fashion brands mislead consumers - SOMO “No forced labour”, “a safe working environment”, and “fair pay”: these are promises clothing brands readily use in advertisements to reassure consumers seeking clean clothing. But what are these clai...

Exposed: Many fashion brands claim to be socially responsible. But these promises are often based on unreliable audits. 🚩

🔎 Together with Consumentenbond and @cleanclothes.bsky.social, we analysed the ‘social washing’ of brands like Nike and Puma.

Here's what we found: www.somo.nl/audited-ethi...

We see the irony 😉 Our social media presence is something we're consciously thinking of and stays a difficult dilemma. While we left X in favour of Bluesky, we believe it's important that our research and analysis can be brought to mainstream platforms to bring evidence and nuance on complex topics.

Presenting the Big Tech Lobby Playbook - SOMO Across continents and political systems, Big Tech has deployed a clear playbook when it comes to lobbying to protect its business interests.

Presenting the Big Tech Lobby Playbook. An exploration of "the tools and tactics of Big Tech’s global influence over law and policymaking." www.somo.nl/presenting-t...

New FOI docs obtained by @cameronwilson.bsky.social show how OpenAI lobbied the Australian government.

They also show the government knew many of OpenAI's claims were overhyped.

Still, OpenAI got a massive win when the AU government dropped plans for mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI.

Presenting the Big Tech Lobby Playbook - SOMO Across continents and political systems, Big Tech has deployed a clear playbook when it comes to lobbying to protect its business interests.

The result? An unfair political battlefield 🚨

Civil society, journalists, academics, and regulators operate locally and with limited resources, while Big Tech lobbies globally, fast, and everywhere at once.

Full analysis: www.somo.nl/presenting-t...

#6: Repeat globally 🌎

Big Tech giants leverage all their resources to implement strategies in one place, refine them, and quickly replicate them elsewhere.

The companies back each other up; like in Kenya, where Bolt and Uber lobbied together against a new cap on their commissions.

#5: Play the Trump card 🇺🇸

Most Big Tech companies are US-based, and they leverage the US’ global economic dominance and trade tariffs to push their agenda.

In 2025, Trump’s reciprocal tariffs put punitive levies on countries whose digital laws “harm US technology firms”.

#4: Never stop lobbying ♻️

Sometimes, Big Tech fails. But thanks to its incredibly deep pockets, it can simply continue lobbying even after the law is passed.

If and when tech companies are finally forced to comply, they do so in ways that undermine the law. That's called malicious compliance.

#3: Weaponise your own platforms 📲

Big Tech giants use the very services they control, like search engines, social networks, or messaging apps, to influence political and public debate.

💡Example: Google in Brazil flooded its own search results with messages against the Fake News Bill.

#2: Create an echo chamber 💬

Big Tech ensure its narratives are repeated everywhere, all the time, for instance by employing former government officials as lobbyists or by funding groups that claim to defend the interests of small businesses and consumers.

#1: Control the narrative 📢

In Big Tech‘s story, innovation is necessary for economic prosperity and is always positive, even if it means overturning decades of hard-won worker rights or sucking the life out of small businesses.

👉Policymakers view “innovation” as an unquestionably “good thing”.

Big Tech has a highly toxic form of political influence 🚩

Around the world and across political systems, its manipulates the legislative and regulatory processes in ways that threaten the fabric of democracy.

Here are 6 lobby strategies used in ways that are distinctive to tech giants. 👇

(thread)

🚨Spanish orgs. file criminal complaint against eDreams over alleged profits from holiday rentals in illegal Israeli settlements.

They seek full accountability, guarantees of non-repetition & remedies for those affected. ✊

bit.ly/3OkF4Wr

@sudscat.bsky.social @novact.bsky.social @alhaq.bsky.social

Thank you 🙏 Let's expose them!

Presenting the Big Tech Lobby Playbook - SOMO Across continents and political systems, Big Tech has deployed a clear playbook when it comes to lobbying to protect its business interests.

Big Tech is deploying a powerful lobby playbook that Big Tobacco and Big Oil could only dream of. 💥

From shaping the policy-making environment to weaponising their own platforms, their strategies are unrivalled; and they're working. 🚨

Read our analysis: www.somo.nl/presenting-t...

Presenting the Big Tech Lobby Playbook - SOMO Across continents and political systems, Big Tech has deployed a clear playbook when it comes to lobbying to protect its business interests.

A classic Big Tech move to create an echo chamber and dominate debates undercover!

See more of their aggressive lobbying strategies in the Big Tech Lobby Playbook, out today: www.somo.nl/presenting-t...

Innovation or irrelevance: How Big Tech has framed EU’s choices - SOMO Big Tech has become the largest corporate lobbying force in the EU, spending more than EUR 35 million to influence EU institutions in 2025.

Innovation or irrelevance: How Big Tech has framed EU’s choices www.somo.nl/how-big-tech... "If the US is the birthplace of Big Tech’s lobby playbook, Europe is where it was sharpened."

The Big Tech Lobby Playbook - Rewriting digital rules globally - SOMO This series of articles by SOMO dives into specific examples of Big Tech lobbying and how they helped shape laws and politics in their favour.

A former Meta director in charge of digital deregulation, how surprising 🤔

This perfectly echoes one of the strategies that we expose in the Big Tech Lobby Playbook: blurring the lines between regulator and regulated.

www.somo.nl/big-tech-lob...