In retrospect I think the relationships built between the Democratic party and Facebook were more about Facebook the company dipping its toe into the wider world of lobbying and the personal relationship of Chris Hughes to LGBT issues and his partner's burgeoning political career. It had less to do with Facebook's Executive staff having deeply held Democratic values or entrenching corporate values that align with the Democratic party and was driven more by a desire to see favorable economic policy for the company.
In the years since we've seen almost 0 movement by political campaigns to pursue this kind of outreach short of your typical ad buys. I think Democratic candidates realized that they were funneling huge amounts of time and money into a service that is actually a competitor. A competitor that is more regulated and less scary than what modern political parties actually track, retain, and use to target their base.
I wonder if Warren isn't getting as much grass roots traction in large part because she hasn't realized that what Facebook does is chump change compared to the operation she needs in place to win.
Let's see how far a candidate gets who takes a similar stand against LexisNexis and threatens to cut off their H-1B visa rubber stamps.
The modern political campaign is basically a startup on the scale of Facebook but your verticals are online, email, direct mail, text, calls, and door to door sales. Oh, and you have physical offices in 50 states, your CEO is perpetually out of office on the road, your sales model is largely B2C, the unpaid interns outnumber the poorly paid full time staff by 100:1, your runway is a couple of months, and you have to completely pivot the company to an entirely new business model 1 month before your IPO (GOTV).
