On Aug. 26, 2025, President Donald Trump warned any country that attempted to regulate U.S. tech platforms that they would face additional tariffs on exports. “I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies. Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology,” he wrote on social media. “Show respect to America and our amazing Tech Companies or consider the consequences!”
Since several Big Tech CEOs attended Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. government has signaled it is ready to fight for their companies’ interests — even if it means interfering in local regulatory debates in other countries.
But Trump’s warning is only the latest salvo in a long battle waged by these companies, which have lobbied hard to influence regulations aimed at mitigating the harm their products cause to society, democracy, and people’s mental health.
Tech companies are increasingly hiring lobbyists, setting up industry associations and launching influence operations to kill or water down laws that impact their profits or challenge their global business models. These bills arise from the need to mitigate the damage that platforms can cause to society, such as compromising citizens' privacy, downgrading information integrity, and undermining democratic institutions, as well as harming the mental well-being of children.
Due to the unprecedented reach and power of these companies, this is one of the most critical issues of our time. That is why Agência Pública a Brazilian nonprofit I co-founded 15 years ago, joined forces with 16 other media outlets from across the world to investigate how the Big Tech lobby is operating globally.
It was a complex and extraordinary effort. After an in-person meeting in Colombia hosted by the Centro Latinoamericano de Periodismo de Investigación (CLIP), which coordinated the project with us, we launched a task force whose work lasted about nine months. During that time, more than 40 journalists made hundreds of information requests in countries from Paraguay to Australia, analyzed records of visits to governments and lawmakers, read corporate and government reports, and interviewed hundreds of sources, including legislators, politicians, lobbyists, experts, activists, victims of the technology market, and insiders. These journalists collaborated to paint the most complete picture of Big Tech's antiregulation activities to date.
What we found was quite surprising: Even though the lobby is on the rise everywhere — today Big Tech is the sector that spends the most on lobbying in the European Union and is one of the largest spenders in the U.S. — there is little data about how they operate in the Global South, where lobbying is not regulated.
In the developing world, due to the power and economic imbalance, their impact is even wider. To be sure, Big Tech companies have more money than many countries. In Latin America alone, Alphabet’s revenue in 2024 was almost the same as Chile’s gross domestic product, three times that of Ecuador, and 10 times that of El Salvador. Meta’s revenue was more than three times Paraguay’s economic output. Amazon’s revenue is equivalent to Argentina’s GDP, and a third of Brazil’s — a country with over 210 million people.
To document how the Big Tech lobby operates, this transnational team did what investigative journalists do best. We created a methodology and painstakingly put together a database of 2,977 lobbying actions between 2019 and 2025 across 11 countries and the European Union to create this dashboard.
The tactics we tracked include the “revolving-door,” that is, hiring former public officials to lobby on behalf of the companies; “astroturfing,” funding civic campaigns or initiatives that seem independent but oppose regulation in a way that benefits the industry’s interests; building relationships with public officials through hospitality gifts, visits, events, dinners, happy hours and trips to Big Tech companies’ headquarters; propositions of bill texts being directly sent by lobbyists; disinformation campaigns promoting the idea that regulation amounts to censorship or threatens innovation; and paid ads in newspapers and social media meant to sway public opinion.
While many of these tactics are used by other industries, there are some characteristics that make the Big Tech lobby more worrisome, apart from the unprecedented economic power of such companies.
For one, these companies touch almost every aspect of people’s lives, from our work and financial dealings to our more intimate relationships with our families. No industry has been so omnipresent, and therefore, influential.
Moreover, they are uniquely placed to pressure politicians, as their platforms are key to any candidate who wants to get internet exposure — and therefore votes. In countries like Brazil, there is a whole generation of lawmakers who are close allies of Big Tech and receive training from Meta and Google as well as VIP customer service to enhance their online presence. They are always willing to defend these companies’ interests, the investigation found.
Brazil is an important case in this global trend, which is why a Brazilian organization first proposed it. It is one of the top markets for Big Tech, and these firms operate freely and strongly in the country. Nucleo, one of the investigation’s Brazilian partners, identified the names of 75 government relations professionals hired by 15 major tech companies working directly with the executive and legislative branches. Two out of every three had worked previously on government jobs, stepping through the revolving door.”
We reported on how Big Tech killed Brazil’s so-called Fake News Bill, the most robust local legislation proposed to hold the companies accountable and demand transparency. Specifically, the Meta policy team devised a disinformation campaign claiming that the bill would lead to censorship of the Bible. In one example of astroturfing, Alphabet used its own products to stir public opinion and persuade YouTubers to protest the bill. In another, a front organization funded by Big Tech named Instituto Cidadania Digital engaged in an initiative that led protesters to the Brasilia airport. Google also hired former President Michel Temer to bolster its efforts, used its search homepage for the anti-regulation campaign and purchased ads that associated the bill with “censorship.”
We found that Google put together a playbook to halt media compensation laws that would enforce copyright payment in Canada, Australia, and Brazil. It includes building relationships with media, throwing party-like events, making private deals with publishers, encouraging the public to turn against the media and leaning on the might of the U.S. government. Google also paid millions to local media outlets to ease regulatory pressure by offering secretive deals under the Google News Showcase, which fosters the outlets’ financial dependence on Google, weakens negotiations for bargaining codes and forces news outlets to give up ancillary rights for content displayed in Google search.
We also learned that trade associations are a core tool for Big Tech's lobbying operation in Latin America. The corporations operate through a network of intermediaries that include groups such as the Latin American Internet Association (ALAI) and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). Since most countries in the region have no regulations on lobbying, there is little transparency about their actions, their effectiveness, and the money invested.
The way societies deal with the harms caused by tech platforms and how they can put in place checks and balances on this powerful industry will define most of what the next decades will look like.
Other highlights include how in Argentina, the federal tax administration was unable to collect taxes after Big Tech companies were given improper exemptions. Local online commerce giant Mercado Libre, along with Netflix and Uber escaped taxation.
From Colombia, we reported on how Big Tech won a battle to weaken a regulation to protect children's mental health. The lobbying campaign included visits to Congress, letters, and social events. We also revealed how Ecuador, under pressure from Big Tech, missed an opportunity to enforce a personal data protection law after a leak that put millions of citizens' data at risk.
In Indonesia, Big Tech lobbying managed to ease the country's tech regulations with the aid of the U.S. Embassy.
We also learned that the politician-lobbyist revolving door even includes former heads of state who have been hired to defend Big Tech’s interests. In Brazil, former President Michel Temer was hired by Google to help dissuade Congress from regulating its search engine and to influence the Supreme Court during an investigation into its potential economic abuse, while the Tony Blair Institute, founded by the former British prime minister, developed a close relationship with Oracle after receiving a donation of $130 million from Larry Ellison, the co-founder and former CEO of the software and cloud-computing giant.
According to over 20 insider sources, workers at the institute were ordered to advocate for the adoption of Oracle products by governments around the world, especially in the Global South, our investigation revealed. Internal sources said “it’s hard to get across just how deeply connected the two [organizations] are. The meetings were like they’re part of the same organization.” Others described having to push Oracle’s technology despite knowing they were not in the best interests of the country in question and even had the potential to cause harm.
This impressive work was done by Agência Pública, CLIP, Cuestión Pública (Colombia); Daily Maverick (South Africa); El Diario.AR (Argentina); El Surti (Paraguay); Factum (El Salvador); ICL (Brazil); IJF (Canada); La Bot (Chile); Lighthouse Reports (International); Núcleo (Brazil); Primicias (Ecuador); TechPolicy.press (USA); Televisa N+ (Mexico); Tempo (Indonesia); and The Crikey (Australia) with the support of the journalism advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders (International) and the law firm El Veinte (Colombia).
However, we know this is just the beginning. The Big Tech lobby is having a much wider impact in many countries that were not represented in the original cohort, where reporting is urgent.
This is a battle for the future. The way societies deal with the harms caused by tech platforms and how they can put in place checks and balances on this powerful industry will define most of what the next decades will look like. And it’s the journalists’ job to be there on the front lines to report on it.
Natalia Viana, a 2022 Nieman Fellow, is the founder of the Brazilian investigative journalism nonprofit Agência Pública.
