In the waning days of 2024, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his company Meta took on 91 senators, a bipartisan group of representatives, President-elect Donald Trump’s son, Trump ally Elon Musk, and a coalition of parents who thought this would be the year Congress passed legislation to protect kids online.

Zuckerberg and Meta won.

Congress left Washington without passing the Kids Online Safety Act after coming closer than ever to imposing rules on social media to prevent the addiction and mental health harms the sites are widely agreed to cause. Zuckerberg can thank House Speaker Mike Johnson for closing the door on it this Congress. Once reviled by Republicans for kicking Trump off Facebook, the outcome shows how well Zuckerberg and Meta have restored a rapport.

“At the end of the day, we see the influence of these platforms is really powerful and they want to stop this legislation and any other tech legislation by any means necessary,” said Alix Fraser, vice president of technology reform at Issue One, an advocacy group that supports the Kids Online Safety Act.

Meta’s largesse

Perhaps the loudest way that the tech industry has made the case that bills like KOSA violate free speech is by suing states with similar laws.

NetChoice and another trade group, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, of which Meta is also a member, have sued nine states that enacted social media laws, winning several cases where states implemented age verification rules.

Litigation has also so far successfully stopped California from fully implementing a law that would limit how much data social platforms can collect on kids and require impact assessments.

Besides its gift to Trump’s inaugural fund, Meta spent nearly $19 million on federal lobbying in the first nine months of this year. Meta lobbied on many issues and the federal disclosure law does not require it to break out how much it spent on each.

In addition to its own in-house lobbyists, Meta paid $180,000 to lobbying firm S-3 Group in part to work with Bravo, a former director of floor operations for Scalise. NetChoice has also paid the S-3 Group $180,000 this year through September.

In July, shortly after the Senate vote, conservative members of Congress were sent an unattributed memo that called the bill a threat to the “pro-life movement” — a previously unheard of narrative. The memo has since been connected to Bravo, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In addition to lobbying, Meta also donated to members.

Its PAC donations favored Republican candidates and their leadership funds in 2023 and 2024, donating $162,350 across the House and Senate.

In the last two years, Meta’s corporate political action committee also put $5,000 into Scalise-run political fundraising committees. It also donated $2,000 to Johnson in 2023 and another $3,000 in September. Meta made its first contribution to Johnson and Scalise campaign funds in 2020.

The social media titan is investing heavily in Louisiana. The company is about to break ground on a $10 billion data center to house its artificial intelligence infrastructure in Richland Parish at a rural site four hours drive north of New Orleans. The state purchased the land almost two decades ago in an attempt to woo manufacturers.

Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed off on new tax incentives for data centers earlier this year. A press release from his office said the project is the largest capital investment in the state’s history.

Two spokespeople for Meta declined to share what other sites for the data center were considered, but said the company started talking to partners in Louisiana earlier this year. They said Meta selected the site because it has great access to infrastructure, a reliable grid, a business-friendly climate, and community partners that helped move the project forward.

Meta has data centers in several other states, including Blackburn’s Tennessee.

Speaker Johnson has often expressed sympathy for parents trying to protect their kids from harmful content online. He joined Democrats three years ago in proposing a resolution calling on tech companies to give parents more tools to monitor and protect their kids.

In April, he met with Maurine Molak, a mother whose son ended his life after intense cyberbullying. Johnson told her he was committed to getting the Kids Online Safety Act passed.