[pixelbath]

How can you even claim that "Facebook" is deeply democratic/liberal? You could say the same about HN, and I've seen quite a few sharply pro-conservative comments posted here.

Anecdotally, the amount of far-right loose-with-facts garbage being posted to Facebook was the primary reason I stopped using it.

[Ill_ban_myself]

I think this misconception stems primarily from the 2008 Obama campaign where groundbreaking work was done directly by Obama's campaign staff using social media for outreach and organizing. This was largely driven by open and direct channels of communication to Facebook staff and the hiring of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and his work with the campaign.

In retrospect I think the relationships built between the Democratic party and Facebook were more about Facebook the company dipping its toe into the wider world of lobbying and the personal relationship of Chris Hughes to LGBT issues and his partner's burgeoning political career. It had less to do with Facebook's Executive staff having deeply held Democratic values or entrenching corporate values that align with the Democratic party and was driven more by a desire to see favorable economic policy for the company.

In the years since we've seen almost 0 movement by political campaigns to pursue this kind of outreach short of your typical ad buys. I think Democratic candidates realized that they were funneling huge amounts of time and money into a service that is actually a competitor. A competitor that is more regulated and less scary than what modern political parties actually track, retain, and use to target their base.

I wonder if Warren isn't getting as much grass roots traction in large part because she hasn't realized that what Facebook does is chump change compared to the operation she needs in place to win.

Let's see how far a candidate gets who takes a similar stand against LexisNexis and threatens to cut off their H-1B visa rubber stamps.

The modern political campaign is basically a startup on the scale of Facebook but your verticals are online, email, direct mail, text, calls, and door to door sales. Oh, and you have physical offices in 50 states, your CEO is perpetually out of office on the road, your sales model is largely B2C, the unpaid interns outnumber the poorly paid full time staff by 100:1, your runway is a couple of months, and you have to completely pivot the company to an entirely new business model 1 month before your IPO (GOTV).

[perl4ever]

I think people for some reason overlook the historical coincidence that the Obama campaign came along only two years after Facebook was open to the public.

I don't think that any other explanation of why they are associated can be meaningful, when it was the first presidential campaign that could work with them, and the last one where it could be groundbreaking.