Hacker News Reader

It’s worthy of a discussion in my mind. There are a few articles in the news this week about Google trying to influence the election in Clinton’s favor. And yet she still lost. Perhaps Google isn’t as influential as they think?

That being said, Google executives are not elected representatives of the American people and they subvert the voter’s will at the risk of regulation that will likely be worse for them and their customers.

View on HN

> That being said, Google executives are not elected representatives of the American people and they subvert the voter’s will at the risk of regulation that will likely be worse for them and their customers.

Google executives and Google as such have the Constitutionally protected right to attempt to influence elections by lawful means, and regulatory retaliation for such activism is exactly what the First Amendment exists to protect against.

(It's kind of ironic that the people arguing that Google should be regulated for advocating against the current administration and the Party behind it often think that the rules preventing churches from retaining their tax-code subsidy while actively campaigning for candidates should be abolished, as they assume those would be likely, on balance, to advocate for that party.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com