The same week Brave uncovered Google’s GDPR workaround  Google Devs release an open source Differential privacy library.

Coincidence? The timing is interesting, especially as Google and its YouTube subsidiary will pay $170 million to settle allegations that YouTube collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent, according to the FTC.

Is this Trump’s team sending a message about what they expect a fair election to be? Let’s not forget the record 5 billion dollar fine Facebook received from the FTC in July.

“Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft met with government officials in Silicon Valley on Wednesday to discuss and coordinate on how best to help secure the 2020 American election”, according to the New York Times.

The message given by the Administration is probably “don’t get any ideas about being partisan”, like in the post-election Breitbart leaked  google company meeting video, in which Google Co-founder Sergey Brin compared Trump supporters to fascists and extremists, a statement that hardly went well with the winning party [1].

The amounts tech companies in the US spend on lobbying have been on the rise, and we cannot foresee any distancing between digital and political in the near future.

Whether higher government requirements for user privacy protection can contribute to a fair US election remains to be seen.

Sources:

[1]https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/