Facebook doubles down on political ambitions with sponsorship of both major conventions

Those thinly veiled shots that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took at Donald Trump last month apparently had no bearing on how his company spends its money.

The social network said Thursday that it will sponsor both the Republican and the Democratic conventions this summer -- providing both events with financial backing, a "Facebook Lounge" on the premises and other forms of support.

Facebook said in a statement that its involvement in the events does not mean the company is vouching for any particular candidate or party. Rather, it considers the sponsorship to be a chance to encourage its users to participate in the election.

"Facebook will support both the Republican and Democratic conventions in a similar manner and without endorsing any one candidate, issue, or political party," Facebook's vice president of U.S. public policy, Erin Egan, said in a statement. 

"This support allows Facebook to facilitate an open dialogue among voters, candidates, and elected officials during the conventions, just as it has during other critical moments in the U.S. elections and in elections around the world," the statement went on.

This isn't the first time that Facebook or its tech brethren have helped fund major political events. Facebook and Google each sponsored multiple candidate debates on both sides of the aisle earlier this year and last fall.   

For Facebook, the sponsorship deals fall in line with its goal of becoming a destination for discussions about real-time news -- a type of conversation where rival Twitter has always had a leg up.

Facebook uses its sponsorship privileges to source questions for the candidates, encourage live-streaming and sell highly targeted real-time ads.

But not everyone is happy with the tech industry's neutral approach to the events. Liberal activist groups have been pressuring Silicon Valley to curb its involvement with the GOP, citing the vitriol and hardline stances of its presumptive nominee.

So-called "#DumpTrump" activists demonstrated outside of Google's Mountain View headquarters last week to protest its decision to livestream the Republican convention. On Thursday, the group CREDO Action ran Facebook ads targeting some 10,000 Google employees.

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Murshed Zaheed, the group's political director, said CREDO is similarly opposed to Facebook's sponsorship.

“It simply isn’t possible for Facebook to financially support a Trump-led Republican convention without associating its brand with Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric,” Zaheed told Mashable in an email. “Facebook has a choice to make: Align its brand with Trump’s racist and sexist campaign or reverse course and dump Trump.”

As for Facebook's actual political contributions, the company's political action committee (PAC) has regularly donated to the campaigns of candidates of both parties in recent years, according to federal filings. 

Zuckerberg himself has mostly declined to discuss his political leanings, though he did subtly criticize Trump's immigration plan during a keynote at Facebook's F8 conference in San Francisco last month. He also reportedly voiced support for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in an internal company chat room. 

A disclaimer in Facebook's public policy page claims that the political views of its executives and employees do not sway the political decisions of the company as a whole.

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