Facebook, Twitter, eBay & Other Big Internet Companies Come Out Against SOPA
While Google has been pretty vocal about its complaints concerning PROTECT IP and SOPA, and Yahoo, LinkedIn and Zynga have expressed concerns elsewhere, the silence of large companies like Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Mozilla and AOL had been unfortunate.
Context & Ripple Effects
Until this week, the anti-SOPA camp had a visible gap at its center: Google had been openly critical of PROTECT IP and SOPA, and Yahoo, LinkedIn and Zynga had raised concerns elsewhere, but the biggest consumer platforms — Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Mozilla and AOL — had stayed quiet, a silence Techdirt had flagged as unfortunate for the opposition's credibility.
That gap closes today, with all five companies now on record against the bill. It lands alongside Techdirt's own polling coverage finding a majority of Americans opposed to SOPA and skeptical of extreme copyright enforcement, giving the platform objections a public-opinion backdrop they previously lacked.
First-order effects
- SOPA's supporters lose their easiest talking point — that opposition to the bill is confined to Google — as five of the largest consumer internet companies formally join the record against it.
- Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Mozilla and AOL each take on direct political exposure to the bill's House and Senate sponsors, converting private concern into a public position they can be lobbied and campaigned on.
Second-order effects
- Lawmakers backing SOPA now face a unified bloc spanning search, social, commerce and browsers, raising the cost of dismissing the objections as one company's self-interest.
- Companies that have stayed neutral or supportive of the bill come under sharper scrutiny by contrast, since the industry split over SOPA is now explicit rather than implied.
Third-order effects
- If this coalition holds, copyright-enforcement legislation stops being negotiated with a silent internet industry and starts requiring the consent of platform companies as a distinct lobbying constituency — a structural shift in how such bills get written.
The trend: Consumer internet platforms are consolidating from scattered grumbling into a coordinated political bloc on copyright legislation, with SOPA as the forcing event.