Facebook: Exempt us from FEC rules

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Facebook, the company that has helped put so much of what was once private out in open on the web, is looking for a sort of corporate privacy setting of its own -- the company is looking to ensure that it is exempt from federal election rules requiring campaign advertisements to include disclosures of who paid for them.

In a request to the Federal Election Commission made late last month, lawyers for the social networking powerhouse argued that the small ads on Facebook’s website should not have to include disclosures because of the limited amounts of room for text. While it’s easy to include disclosures on a television ad, billboard or email, Facebook argues, it’s more difficult with the tiny ads posted along the side of its webpages. “With some mediums … - e.g. bumper stickers, buttons, pens, T-shirts, concert tickets, and text messages - it is inconvenient or impracticable to include a disclaimer,” three lawyers from the Washington office of the firm Perkins Coie write in their request for an advisory opinion from the FEC.


Facebook: Exempt us from FEC rules