Obama Friends Facebook: What's Up With That?

President Obama is running for reelection and desperately trying to a)raise money in Silicon Valley and b) signal to younger voters that he is their candidate. There is lots of money in tech these days and they have some issues on which he can be an advocate: increasing visas for foreign workers, maintaining net neutrality, changing patent law. The risk is that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not exactly the living embodiment of all that is holy and the company itself has taken enough questionable steps with personal privacy that the favorability its reputation is not assured.

On the plus side, the fastest growing Facebook demographic segment is women over 40, another group Obama must win over if he is to prevail in 2012. So, the reasons for the charm offensive are clear enough. Whether it sends the intended message or comes back to haunt him remains to be seen. Richard Waters, Joseph Menn and Daniel Dombey report in the Financial Times:

"Some of the most controversial issues confronting Facebook, including its deliberations about privacy and entering the Chinese market, were thrown into sharp relief as Barack Obama visited its headquarters.

The Silicon Valley visit on Wednesday, for the latest in a series of public meetings to discuss ways to reduce the US deficit, revived memories of the groundbreaking use of social networking in Mr Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

However, ties with the dominant social networking site also carry risks for both the US president and the company, particularly at a time when Facebook has come to assume a central role in debates over issues such as privacy and the role the internet plays in promoting global freedom, according to some political observers.

“For the president, if you align yourself with a company that does something problematic, you run the risk of being associated with that,” said Chris Lehane, a political consultant who worked with Bill Clinton, the former president.

Facebook also risked making itself a target for the president’s opponents and alienating some users. “When a company puts itself above the trenches, poisoned arrows may come its way,” Mr Lahane said. “You’ve got to be really careful about not being perceived as being aligned with one side or the other.”

While Facebook has won acclaim recently for the way it has been used as an organising tool by activists in countries such as Egypt, a fierce internal debate over whether to accept restrictions to enter China could lead to a political backlash, according to observers.

Going into China would open “a pretty big can of worms”, particularly after Google abandoned its own compliance with Chinese censors, said Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the New America Foundation. “Any business that does business in China has to actively and proactively carry out censorship: either you’re going to be globally consistent about your values or you’re going to look really bad.”

In a sign of the potential backlash it faces, a junior Facebook lobbyist was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying: “We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before.”

Facebook might be able to avoid some of the political damage of going into China if it were to enter the market through a joint venture with a local company and leave its operations there to its Chinese partner, said Ms MacKinnon. The company has refused to comment on a report in China that it is negotiating such an alliance with Baidu, the leading local search engine.

“Right now, we’re studying and learning about China, but have made no decisions about if, or how, we will approach it,” said Facebook.

Meanwhile, some privacy campaigners criticised Mr Obama’s decision to visit Facebook at a time when the company has been the subject of a complaint to regulators over changes to its privacy policies that made previously confidential information about its users accessible to all.

“He is not showing good judgment,” said Jeff Chester, of the lobby group Center for Digital Democracy. “Facebook is in the crosshairs of his own Federal Trade Commission regulators and the European Union and it is seeking a host of favours” from the administration.

However, the White House’s call last month for basic legislation to protect consumer data online, along with privacy bills that have been introduced in Congress, have also drawn support for the administration. “They are making progress,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed the complaint to the FTC.

By visiting Facebook headquarters barely two months after he sat next to Mark Zuckerberg at a Silicon Valley dinner, Mr Obama is deepening his administration’s ties with a company with which it is already closely associated.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s operating chief and a former chief of staff at the Treasury during the Clinton administration, was one of a handful of business leaders invited to see Mr Obama at the White House on Tuesday for a meeting on immigration.

Mr Obama singled out the company in his State of the Union address as a symbol of US innovation. His administration has also identified the company as one of the leading factors in the protest movement in the Arab world, and his campaign team is keen to update its successful 2008 election strategy with greater use of social technology.

This week’s visit to Silicon Valley is also the latest attempt by the president to revive support in the technology industry, where he enjoyed strong backing during the 2008 campaign.

Confidence in the administration among tech executives and investors reached a low point last year as policies towards business in general drew a sour response and early hopes for steps to bolster US technology innovation failed to materialise.

Mr Obama’s more recent charm offensive in the Valley, which has included appointing senior tech industry figures to new working groups aimed at boosting US innovation and competitiveness, has since assuaged some critics.