BigTech spent a total of $124 million on lobbying and campaigns during the 2020 US presidential election cycle – eclipsing spending by telecommunications and weapons companies.

The research by Washington-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said the spike was led by Amazon and Facebook, who spent 30 per cent and 56 per cent more respectively since 2018.

The two firms spent more than oil giant Exxon Mobil and tobacco giant Philip Morris who were top fixtures in lobbying spending for decades.

The other top spenders on lobbying included weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, and European consumer goods company Unilever.

The news comes after Public Citizen’s 2019 research revealed that BigTech firms had increased their lobbying spend from a collective total of $19.2 million to $118 million between the 2010 and 2018 mid-term election cycles.

The report also said that BigTech companies increased the pace of lobbyist recruitment in 2020, increasing its ranks by 40 new lobbyists, from 293 in 2018 to 333 in 2020.

These lobbyists are generally recruited from former congressional staffers, Federal Trade Commission officials, and other government officials.

In addition, Public Citizen highlighted political spending covered in its report represents just one part of a “greater puzzle of influence-peddling” across the US.

It outlined other methods that BigTech could obtain government influence which could include state and local election spending, advertising, and “dark money” paid to unions.

Transparency International EU, a Brussels-based non-government organisation which supports political transparency, said BigTech spent €19 million on EU lobbying as a result of the increased level of attention from regulators that they have received recently.

“BigTech’s increasingly dominant role in our economy and everyday lives is worsening social problems that need a political response,” Public Citizen’s report concluded. “Yet as BigTech converts its enormous economic and social power into political influence, our political system is hamstrung from addressing those increasingly serious issues.”

It added: “This problem is reflective both of BigTech’s extraordinary wealth and power and a broken political system that works for giant corporations but not the rest of us. It is not susceptible to easy solutions.”

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