The tech companies may already be not complying with state and city law. They could already be enabling dirty money for Dino Rossi. We'd never know. Now more than ever, we need a constitutional ammendment overturn Citizens United. A majority of Democrats support it, a majority of Republicans support it- why won't Congress support it, too?

It's as dead as all those schoolkids in Florida! Zing!

America!

Bub dear, how do you like the weather in Russia? It always seems like it would be too cold for me, but I suppose that if the money is good it's worth putting up with it - especially when one is not bright.

@5: Ah, November 8th 2016, when everyone on the internet became either an immigration lawyer (as opposed to just a regular lawyer like they were before), or a Russian being paid directly by the Kremlin.

@4 Google, Facebook, etc. aren't the free press. This is advertising, which is a different class of speech---commercial speech---and it doesn't have blanket first amendment protection.

I'm pretty sure our forefathers didn't die for allowing foreign actors to buy unlimited advertising intended to destabilize our democracy---that's generally considered an act of war, which they probably wouldn't think to highly of---and they probably wouldn't have been pro-"Corporations are people" either and allow virtually unlimited corporate political advertising to be buried in online ad buys. But maybe your'e right. Maybe they did anticipate Faceook and Google, and they'd be totally cool with an oligarchy or corporatocracy.

"Online pranksters". Yeah, because we all know this whole "Russian interference in the U.S. election process" is really just a few goofy kids in Novgorod or Yaroslavl pulling some innocent japes on teh FB...

Thanks for the laugh, comrade!

Bub dear, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to assume that you really are as gullible as you sound.

As for the elections, I think Trump’s victory was a matter of GOP voter suppression and Russian meddling designed to impress stupid people, of which we have no shortage. Were they working together? Probably not.

@11:

As I suspected, either you haven't been paying attention, or else you simply lack the attention span to do more than parrot whatever RW talking point you've been fed, or you yourself are little more than a willing pass-through for the very same disinformation you claim doesn't in-fact exist. But regardless, here's some reading material to get you up-to-speed, so you can keep up with the current state of things. Who knows? If you manage to absorb enough of this without being distracted by too many shiny objects or squirrels, you might someday be in a position to contribute something of actual value to the conversation.

Oh Bub. Poor, dear, deluded Bub. You’ve been stewing In propaganda for so long that your mind is quite addled, isn’t it? You’re what Stalin (or was it Lenin?) used to call a “Useful Idiot”.

But by all means continue to post your twaddle. We’re a welcoming place here on Slog. I’m sure you’ll find some chums.

Conservatism is dead. In its place is a bunch of easily controlled idiots who are angry and resentful that it’s not 1952 anymore. They’re lead by cynical millionaires who know it’s in their best interests to keep the rank-and-file stupid and suspicious, and they, in turn, are bankrolled by a handful of inherited wealth sociopaths who fear the rabble as much as they fear death.

I'm surprised Eli keeps taking victory laps on this one. It's a complex issue, both technically and legally. Do we require tech giants to disclose proprietary intellectual property? Can we? How do you report targeting data if it changes 3 or 4 times midstream through an election? Other regulated technologies work closely with government agencies like FIPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140-2 for data security or HIPAA for patient privacy. (It's a long list...) Here it's "do what we want, we're not sure exactly what that is or how to do it, but do it."

To quote a legend in my industry as spoken to me over a decade ago, "You are so incredibly naive.".