In the third quarter of 2021, Facebook spent more than $5 million lobbying the U.S. government as the social media platform remained under fire for various issues, federal filings show.
A spending report filed Wednesday states that Facebook spent $5.09 million on lobbying efforts in the third quarter and names 14 lobbyists who addressed issues ranging from climate change to the For the People Act of 2021, the filings show.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft outspent other Big Tech companies in their respective Q 3 government lobbying expenditures.
The spending is not new for the massive social media platform, which spent nearly $4.8 million on government lobbying in the first and second quarter of 2021 and nearly $4.7 million on government lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2020. Facebook also topped $5.2 million on efforts to lobby the government in the first quarter of 2020 between Jan. 1 and March 31.
Since the end of the third quarter, criticism has continued to pile up against Facebook as well.
Its Wednesday filing came before former Facebook product manager and whistleblower Frances Haugen's shocking to the Senate Commerce Committee and forthcoming reports regarding thousands of pages of leaked documents that Facebook said were mischaracterized in an Oct. 18 tweet.
Facebook is also facing a revised antitrust lawsuit from the government, which the company is urging the government to throw out. The FTC is accusing Facebook of holding a monopoly in the U.S. since 2011 which Facebook denies, saying it is entirely without legal or factual support.