Big Tech’s Invisible Hand

When Scottish economist Adam Smith, often called the father of liberalism, spoke in the 18th century of the "invisible hand of the market," he pointed out that by pursuing their own interests, individuals could, without intending to, benefit society as a whole. But Smith also warned that merchants often collude to manipulate the rules in their favor and that the state has a duty to prevent monopolies and provide public goods. Today, we see that, if left unchecked, corporations do exactly what Smith feared: they shape laws, co-opt governments, and manipulate public opinion for their own benefit.

In the face of legislative advances, one sector has stood out in lobbying against regulation around the world:  the Big Tech, a select group of multimillion-dollar companies such as Meta (owner of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram), Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube), Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple—known as the "Big Five"—and others, such as China's ByteDance (owner of TikTok) or Latin American giant Mercado Libre, and new players in the race for artificial intelligence, such as Open AI.

Together, the tech giants have more impact on all aspects of people's lives than many governments. However, governments, whose mission is to serve the public, are accountable to citizens and constrained by laws, institutions, and regulations. Big Tech companies, by contrast, exist primarily to maximize profits and are accountable above all to their shareholders. Often those who control these corporations can be counted on one hand.

There is little data on how they act to influence legislation. Today, Big Tech is the sector that spends the most on lobbying in the European Union, where they are required to declare their investments. In 2024, the sector spent €67 million, an increase of 57% since 2020. In the United States, where must also publish their lobbying expenses, they spent $61 million in the same year, an increase of 13% compared to 2023. To open the doors of the Trump administration, companies such as Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft each donated $1 million to the inauguration committee, and their CEOs lined up during the event.

But how do they operate in the rest of the world?  

Big tech companies also have more money than many countries. According to information reported in its financial statements, Alphabet, the owner of Google, had revenue of $350 billion in 2024, which is almost equivalent to Chile's GDP, three times that of Ecuador, and ten times that of El Salvador. Meta had revenues of $164 billion in 2024, more than three times Paraguay's economic output. Amazon's revenues last year were nearly $638 billion, a figure equivalent to Argentina's GDP.

Their bargaining power is greater in less developed countries, and they know how to use it. In some countries, such as most of Latin America and the global south, including Brazil, lobbying is unregulated, making it even more difficult to track lobbying activities and measure their impact on legislation passed in Congress. 

But these hands that shape societies must not remain invisible. This work is done by well-paid professionals who are part of complex operations, internally referred to as "government relations" or "public affairs." These departments, in turn, hire third parties to act on their behalf, such as law firms or business associations. They invest in ways to build and maintain relationships with authorities, distributing favors; they promote private meetings, pay for trips, happy hours, and after-work dinners; and they forge alliances based on access to their technologies.

For the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), lobbying and influence activities are "actions, carried out directly or through any other natural or legal person, directed at public officials in the exercise of the decision-making process, their stakeholders, the media, or a wider audience, and which aim to promote the interests of lobbyists and influencers in relation to public decision-making and electoral processes."

Lobbying strategies often go beyond the relationship with public officials and may include campaigns to manipulate public opinion, the press, the funding of institutes or for the production of scientific knowledge. 

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, describes in her book Careless People how her bosses at the tech company, surprised by their own power and naivety, began negotiating with governments around the world and, driven solely by profit, ended up "growing fast and breaking laws." The author was ironically paraphrasing the  often-mentioned-slogan of Mark Zuckerberg, the main owner of Meta, who instructed his team to "move fast and break things." 

To document how these lobbying operations work, the project The Invisible Hand of Big Tech is publishing three sets of investigations that shed light on how Big Tech has attempted to shape bills and regulations, litigated against governments in the courts, and deployed its influence operations to avoid regulation to mitigate its negative effects on societies and politics; how it has influenced the debate on public information; and what is the environmental impact of data centers, those enormous infrastructures that house their thousands of servers. 

For the first time, a collaborative, cross-border investigation has identified nearly 3,000 lobbying actions carried out before congresses and governments in various countries, which can be accessed in an interactive database. We have also recorded legal proceedings and bills related to the rules of the game in the technology industry.

Learn more about here the lobbying tactics identified in this project and the methodological note. 

Making the "invisible hand" of Big Tech visible is a task that the organizations participating in this project consider urgent. For this reason, all of them include a collective notice about the funding they have received from technology companies in the present or in the past. See here for the complete list.  

How Big Tech’s “Invisible Hand” Reaches Latin American Regulators

“What should we, as members of Congress, be doing about artificial intelligence?” asks Diego Caicedo, a young Colombian congressman, in a video posted to his Instagram profile. Standing beside him is Pablo Nieto, another Colombian, who answers: “Create frameworks that promote AI” and “listen to all stakeholders.”

There was nothing casual about the exchange—not the setting, not the speakers, and certainly not what was said.

Both men are part of a broader web of influence through which Big Tech companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft shape public policy in Latin America. Other players in this quiet, high-stakes game include lawmakers who echo tech-friendly arguments, well-paid lobbyists who push corporate narratives, and experts or former officials who frame private interests as matters of public good.

When tech companies prefer not to put their own lobbyists in the spotlight, they turn to intermediaries: law firms, industry associations, and policy groups. These entities host international conferences, meet regularly with public officials, produce studies designed to “enlighten” ministries, and submit policy proposals under the banner of national development.

As Andrés Hernández, Executive Director of Transparencia por Colombia, explained to this reporting alliance, their strategy is simple: gain “access to decision-makers and to any mechanism that allows them to influence decisions.”

None of this is illegal—and none of it is new. In many ways, it mirrors the tactics of other powerful multinationals, like mining, tobacco or pharmaceutical  companies.

But there is a crucial difference. Where those companies could influence a single sector, Big Tech has embedded itself into nearly every aspect of modern life. From talking to family and scheduling appointments to getting directions, holding virtual meetings, or reading the news—avoiding tech platforms takes conscious effort. And their influence is only growing, as artificial intelligence becomes woven into everything we do.

We’re talking about Alphabet—the parent company of Google, YouTube, and dozens of tools for navigation, learning, research, even investigative journalism. By its own definition, Alphabet’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Today, “to google” is a verb in most languages. And while there are other search engines, none are as deeply embedded in the daily routines of Latin Americans.

We’re also talking about Meta, the company behind WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram—whose stated goal is “to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.” People have also invented the verb “to whatsapp” to mean “send a message.” Every day, millions share their lives on Facebook and Instagram. Meta’s platforms know their users inside and out and sell that knowledge to advertisers—whether they’re selling soap or running for office—down to the level of emotional states, making it easier to market products or ideas tailored to each user. According to the company’s own reports, on an average day in December 2024, some 3.35 billion people were using at least one Meta platform. That’s nearly half the global population.

Such influence on politics, human rights, social welfare, public health, the mental health of young people, the economy, and the simple fact that these companies are practically indispensable to function in today’s life, would lead one to think that regulating them is crucial for any country.

But as this journalistic investigation—The Invisible Hand of Big Tech, led by the Brazilian outlet Agência Pública and the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP), together with 15 other media outlets from 13 countries—has shown, regulating the tech giants has been anything but easy. They have bottomless pockets to fight every battle. Their algorithms hide behind trade secrecy, and sophisticated expertise is needed to regulate them without sliding into censorship. And they resist at all costs any local rule that might undermine their global business model.

A database collectively built from publicly available online information, freedom of information requests, interviews with dozens of sources in governments, congresses, and tech companies, as well as with experts and academics, documented 2,977 concrete influence actions in ten countries and the European Union, most of them between 2019 and June 2025. These involved 1,516 direct or indirect representatives of the tech companies who, in defense of the digital industry’s positions, interacted with 2,508 public officials—from legislators, regulators, and ministers to directors of public schools and hospitals. (See dashboard  and methodology board created from the database.)

This investigation also found that the need to curb the unwanted impacts of Big Tech is so great that, in just eleven countries and the European Union, governments, legislators, or citizens have introduced at least 801 bills since 2019. These initiatives seek to improve moderation in spaces where children and teenagers gather; block accounts that spread hate with impunity; enforce national electoral or data protection laws; hold platforms accountable for harmful content; and punish damaging uses of artificial intelligence, among other causes.

The journalistic alliance likewise found 315 legal cases in just four countries, recorded since 2022, tied to conflicts with tech companies. These lawsuits range from a citizen’s complaint over the misuse of a video or image, to claims for failing to regulate harmful content or to comply with privacy laws. Tech companies, for their part, have also sued governments to oppose sanctions or rules that restrict their operations.

This alliance sent detailed questionnaires to Big Tech companies about their lobbying activities in several countries. The corporations responded with general statements acknowledging their interactions with policymakers in issues relevant to their products and businesses, and claiming these interactions comply with all relevant ethical and regulatory guidelines. Find a document detailing the companies’ responses here.

In this cross-border story of The Invisible Hand of Big Tech, we reveal in detail how several lobbying operations unfolded in Latin America by some of the companies that most shape people’s daily lives. Where were their battles fought? Who makes up their squads of lobbyists and influence agents in certain countries?

A Telling Photo

The meeting where Colombian congressman Caicedo interviewed his compatriot Nieto, cited above, was called Digiecon 2025. It took place in April of this year in Mexico City and brought together at least 15 legislators from Latin America with executives from TikTok, Meta, Rappi, Mercado Libre and Google, among others, to debate “digital economy” and “social and economic development.”

It was organized by the Latin American Internet Association (ALAI), the industry group representing the tech companies, which invited Caicedo—according to what he told Cuestión Pública, the Colombian outlet that is part of this alliance.

Congress members present at Digiecon 2025 included Brazilian deputies Any Ortiz, Rodrigo Valadares, and David Soares; four Argentine legislators (Juan Manuel López, Dahiana Fernández Molero, Karina Banfi, and Santiago Santurio); four additional Colombian legislators besides Caicedo (Ciro Rodríguez Pinzón, Carlos Guevara, Irma Luz Herrera, and Daniel Restrepo Carmona); three Chilean legislators (Leonardo Soto Ferrada, Francisco Chahuán, and Paula Labra); and others from Guatemala (Manuel De Jesús Archila Cordón), Costa Rica (Kattia Cambronero Aguiluz), and Peru (José Ernesto Cueto). This journalistic alliance was able to reconstruct the list of attendees using photos of the event and other records from social media. Additional public officials from these and other Latin American countries also took part.

We found that some of these guests are now central figures in digital policy debates in their legislatures, either pushing—and at times blocking—bills, or advancing the interests of tech companies within their parliaments. That photo from the event thus becomes a powerful metaphor for how the tech giants’ tentacles extend across the continent.

Representative Caicedo, for example, in September 2024 pushed for the creation of an ad hoc commission to study the pending bills related to artificial intelligence, just as another committee was preparing to do the very same thing. Although the move was officially aimed, according to Congress, at unifying various regulatory initiatives, it failed to achieve that goal. Colombian senator Alirio Uribe, who has promoted several of those bills, told Cuestión Pública and CLIP, members of this alliance, that the AI commission “was created to obstruct all the projects. What they did was take all the bills, review them, and then present us with inane articles.” Since then, only one AI regulation has been passed by the Colombian legislature: a measure that increases penalties for fraud when artificial intelligence tools are used to commit it.

Caicedo did not answer questions from this journalistic partnership about his role in the process of AI bills in the Colombian congress, nor those about his video with Nieto.

Nieto, ALAI’s public policy manager for the Andean region, maintains a permanent presence in Colombia’s Congress. He appears in public consultations and writes legal opinions on bills, but he also organizes open and closed-door events with legislators and has cultivated close relationships with Caicedo and several other Colombian congress members, as this journalistic alliance has verified through public events and social media content. Between October 2023 (when he began working at ALAI) and December 2024, Nieto logged 22 visits to congress members, according to a freedom of information request filed by Cuestión Pública.

In Ecuador, Nieto has also lobbied in favour of the tech companies during the regulatory process following approval of Data Protection Law  in 2021. The first regulation, adopted in 2023, was drafted with participation from industry associations but with almost no input from other sectors, according to the outlet Primicias, another partner in this alliance. In 2024, Nieto met with Fabrizio Peralta Díaz, Ecuador’s Superintendent of Data Protection, to discuss specific regulatory issues under the law, according to public records. And in April 2025, Peralta Díaz travelled to Mexico for Digiecon, where he again met with Nieto and with Raúl Echeberría, ALAI’s executive director.

Asked about his relationship with ALAI, Peralta Díaz said Primicias he has not received any pressures from ALAI or any other actor. “I have never received any particular or special request by Pablo (Nieto) other than their request to be listened,” he said. In a statement, ALAI said that “official echanges with governments and officers are held through usual formal channels in each country.”

The Footprint of ALAI

ALAI was founded in 2015 in Montevideo, Uruguay, as an alliance between five technology companies: the Latin American firms Despegar.com, a travel company, and Mercado Libre, an online marketplace; and the U.S. giants Yahoo, Facebook, and Google. Its first executive director, Gonzalo Navarro, said in an interview at the time that the Association sought to “contribute to strengthening the Internet ecosystem, building bridges between the different actors that compose it and developing public policies within our remit.”

Today, among the 14 technology companies on its board are Amazon, AirBnb, and TikTok, as well as the Latin American delivery company Rappi. As recorded in its 2023 financial statements filed with the Uruguayan government, each of these companies pays an annual membership fee of up to $50,000, with some also contributing additional amounts to support specific projects. That year ALAI reported revenues of more than one million dollars, all of them coming from contributions by technology companies, and administrative expenses of $711,000.

ALAI staunchly defends the commercial interests of its member companies before congresses, courts, and regulatory entities across the region. The Association, for example, opposed tourism regulations in Colombia that sought to limit short-term rentals promoted by AirBnb. In Mexico, it pushed for “a balanced regulatory framework” in debates about the labor rights of workers for companies such as Rappi — an elegant way of resisting measures that would have required platforms to provide formal labor contracts to their workers.

The association said “it does not represent the interests of specific companies or lobby on behalf of specific companies, but rather, like any other sectoral business chamber, represents the interests of the sector in general.”

In Brazil, it has also criticized similar proposals, and its positions have found a receptive audience among some of the legislators who attended Digiecon 2025 in Mexico City. Brazilian congresswoman Any Ortiz announced on her Instagram that she was there to discuss a bill of law to regulate the digital market, for which she serves as rapporteur. “This ecosystem can drive small, medium, and large companies, generating more innovation, competitiveness, and opportunities,” she wrote in her post.

A month later, on May 7 of this year, Ortiz  requested a public hearing to debate a study published by the Latin American Internet Association (ALAI) in September 2024, related to that bill. The study concluded that the proposed regulation would be harmful to Brazil’s economy and could impose additional costs on users of more than R$2 billion (equivalent to US$365 million).

Thirteen days later, Sérgio Garcia Alves, ALAI’s manager in Brazil, said — seated next to Ortiz — that the initiative could cause “a spiral of costs,” since it contemplated a 2% tax on the operational revenues of platforms. He also said that the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), on which the Brazilian bill was modelled, was “an experimental regulatory framework, whose benefits are not yet evident.”

For her part, Ortiz said she had doubts whether the bill was convenient: she not only claimed that some of the DMA’s rules do not apply in Brazil, and would therefore “need to be further developed,” but also warned that the measure “could impact the cost to consumers using digital services.” These were precisely the same points raised by ALAI.

In a response she sent to this alliance, Ortiz said the positions she expressed at the hearing “do not come from a specific entity, but from a broad process of reflection and analysis.” She also said she invited government representatives to participate in the event, but “they decided not to attend.”

Ortiz sought to “listen to all stakeholders” in the regulation of technology markets and that she has “regularly participated in national and international events organized by various entities,” she said. She also stated that the hearing about the ALAI study “was unrelated” to her participation in Digiecon, as it was initially requested in 2024. The congresswoman did not answer who financed her trip to Digiecon, but said it did not generate any costs for the Chamber of Deputies. Read the full response here.

ALAI was also present in Brazil’s discussions on the so-called Fake News bill (2630 of 2020), which sought to regulate digital platforms and was ultimately buried by platform lobbying, as revealed in another story of this investigation. Between March and May 2023, when the bill was about to be voted on in the Chamber of Deputies, the Association published three documents (1, 2, 3,) opposing its approval. It argued, for instance, that the text posed a risk of state control over information — a claim that, according to Artur Romeu, head of Reporters Without Borders’ Latin American Office, had no foundation. 

“Regulation is not censorship. The bill has been widely debate for years and is based on democratic models”, he said to Agência Pública.

On March 28 of that year, Garcia Alves, ALAI’s Brazil manager, signed a text proposing to keep Article 19 of the Marco Civil da Internet, which stipulates that digital platforms can only be held liable for third-party content if they fail to remove it after being ordered to do so by a judge. While the Court deliberated, ALAI organized a lunch for Brazilian authorities who were attending a forum organized by Gilmar Mendes, one of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) justices who voted on the case.

The Association, however, failed to achieve its goal, because in June the STF ruled that companies were  responsible for harmful content even when there was no prior court order. Google, Meta, TikTok, and X were all involved in this legal process.

In Colombia, ALAI was part of a coalition of organizations that succeeded in getting Congress to amend a rule that sought to regulate digital content that could be hamrful to children’s mental health. (See full Colombia story), as recounted in another investigation by this journalistic alliance. Although civil society also criticized the initiative for granting excessive powers to the regulator, the arguments that carried the day in the Senate plenary were those of the tech lobby, which claimed the measure could threaten freedom of expression in Colombia and “lead to the arbitrary removal of information, limiting the diversity of opinions and voices in digital spaces.”

ALAI is also behind another influence initiative in the region: the Alliance for an Open Internet (AIA). This opposes the establishment of a so-called “network fee” — that is, requiring big tech companies to contribute financially to the operation of telecommunications infrastructure. The alliance began in Brazil in 2023 and its first executive director was former federal congressman Alessandro Molon (PSB - RJ). In 2025, with ALAI and several of its member companies as founding members, the initiative expanded to the rest of Latin America. Its regional director is Mercedes Aramendía, former head of Uruguay’s Regulatory Unit for Communications Services, a case that clearly illustrates the “revolving door,” by which companies seek to influence public power by hiring former government officials.

When asked about the selection of former public officials to fill management positions and for the reason for its expansion in Latin America, the AIA did not respond. The entity stated that it represents “more than 14,000 companies in Brazil” and that it “closely follows discussions on network tariffs and defends net neutrality as an essential principle for the Brazilian internet.” ALAI did not answer questions about its relationship with AIA.

Lobbying from Washington in Brazil

In addition to ALAI’s activities, Big Tech has also invested in regional influence operations through other international associations, such as the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the Center for Information Policy Leadership (CIPL), both based in Washington, and Access Partnership, headquartered in London. In recent years, these organizations have focused on debates around technology company regulations, artificial intelligence (AI), and the network fee.

The ITI counts among its members Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, Lenovo, and NVIDIA. According to its website, the group seeks to ensure that “all governments around the world to develop policies, standards, and regulations that promote innovation and growth for the tech industry.” Founded in 1916, it has changed its membership over time with the evolution of technologies.

Between 2023 and 2024, ITI representatives held at least 11 meetings with members of Brazil’s Executive Branch, according to La Mano Invisible de las Big Tech, using data from the Transparent Agenda. They visited regulatory agencies, as well as ministries, and the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic. At several of these meetings, ITI was accompanied by company representatives from Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mastercard, HP, IBM, and Intel.

According to one Brazilian public officer visited by the group, who asked not to be identified, ITI has been “very active” in the country since 2016. When asked about how these dialogues unfold with industry representatives, the official said: “the companies and associations usually arrive, sometimes they prepare a presentation, sometimes not, they introduce themselves, and then move on to a more specific topic to ‘show the absurdity of what is happening’ in a given matter. They knock on every door in search of the most receptive ear,” .

Agência Pública filed a Freedom of Information request for the minutes, notes, or recordings of the 11 meetings between ITI and Brazilian authorities. The Civil House stated that the meeting allowed ITI to present “points of attention” regarding Bill 2,338/2023, which proposes to regulate AI; the Ministry of Communications informed that the discussion focused on the implementation of communications infrastructure; and the National Telecommunications Agency, Anatel, reported they talked about cybersecurity requirements and regulatory best practices.

At most of the meetings with Brazilian authorities, the Brazilian lobbyist Husani Durans de Jesus was present. A former official of the country’s Foreign Ministry, he is now ITI’s Director for the Americas, based in Washington. Durans de Jesus travelled to Brazil at least three times in recent years, according to social media posts and Brazilian Congress entry logs: in March 2023, March 2024, and September 2024, sometimes accompanied by other members of the group.

The group also sponsored the seminar “Regulation of the Use of Telecommunications Networks” in Brasília, in partnership with Editora Globo, to discuss collection of the network fee. The association also signed four pieces of “branded content” on the financial news website Valor Econômico, as noted in the articles themselves.

In September, as the AI bill was being hotly debated in the Senate, Husani travelled to Brazil accompanied by Courtney Lang, another Senior Vice President of ITI, who leads the group’s global work on AI regulation. Together, they met with staff from Senator Eduardo Gomes (PL-TO), the bill’s author. “Fantastic meeting with Senator Eduardo Gomes’ office in Brazil,” Durans wrote in a social media post about the encounter.

A week before arriving in the country, Lang had already made very specific recommendations via videoconference during a public hearing on the bill. One of them was to eliminate two articles listing the rights of users of AI technologies, since they “assume there will be significant risks to human rights throughout the AI lifecycle, which, in my view, is not always the case.”

ITI has also hosted receptions for Brazilian lawmakers in Washington, such as in March 2024, according to LinkedIn posts and at least three travel reports filed by legislators. Among those present was Senator Marcos Pontes, who was member of a temporary Senate committee analysing the AI bill. From this committee he pushed for changes aligning the law more closely with Big Tech’s interests. He was the same senator who, months earlier, had invited Lang to testify at a public hearing on the very same bill.

In a statement, an ITI spokesperson said it interacts with government officials around the world “to promote policies and industry standards that advance competition and innovation on behalf of the technology sector”. Its engagements with Brazilian officials, the spokesperson said, focus on “enabling more citizens, businesses, and communities to benefit from increased digital connectivity and inclusion.”

Pontes did not answer to questions by Agência Pública about whether or not he believed there was any conflict of interest regarding his role in the committee.

During that same trip to the United States, Brazilian legislators also visited the Center for Information Policy Leadership (CIPL). According to its website, CIPL is a think tank that offers its members “opportunities to work on important issues related to privacy and information policy with key privacy experts and stakeholders from regulators, governments, and academia.” Its members include tech and telecom companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tools for Humanity (Worldcoin), Telefónica, and Mercado Libre. Founded in 2001 by several companies and the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP (formerly Hunton & Williams), CIPL is another established lobbying vehicle.

The trip aimed to “guide decision-making and lawmaking related to AI in Brazil,” according to the event briefing accessed by Agência Pública. It was organized by the Competitive Brazil Movement, an organization seeking to foster closer ties between the public and private sectors.

In its 2024 activity report, CIPL celebrated that Brazilian legislators had incorporated into their AI bill several recommendations from a report it published on global AI regulation. 

CIPL did not respond to questions sent by this journalistic alliance.

Other international lobbying firms are also seeking to influence Brazil’s legislation, given that it is one of the largest markets for the leading technology platforms. Paula Corte Real, a Brazilian lobbyist with the UK-based firm Access Partnership — which describes itself as “the world’s leading tech consultancy” — has visited the Chamber of Deputies at least five times in 2025, according to a Freedom of Information request filed by Agência Pública. In the past year, Corte Real has met with lawmakers including Reginaldo Lopes (PT-MG), Helio Lopes (PL-RJ), and Lafayette de Andrada (Republicanos-MG), who chairs the Mixed Parliamentary Front for Digital Economy and Citizenship (the “Digital Front”).

In the Courts and in Congress

At times, the lobbying of these associations intertwines with the legal battles that tech companies wage against state regulators. In Brazil, the law firm Bialer Falsetti Associados (BFA), which defends Meta in data protection cases against the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), counts attorney Ana Paula Bialer among its partners. Bialer took part in six meetings between ITI and Brazilian authorities, three of them at the ANPD offices.

She does not disclose her connection to ITI on her social media, but in the public agendas of Brazilian authorities and in records obtained by Agência Pública through freedom of information requests, she is identified as a consultant to the association. 

Bialer is also an active lobbyist in the National Congress. She visited the Chamber of Deputies at least twelve times between 2023 and 2025, including on key voting days for major bills. On three of those occasions, she declared she was visiting the office of Deputy Luísa Canziani, president of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in the Chamber of Deputies, who, as another story of this aliance reports, faces questions for possible conflict of interest related to Google. In 2021, the lawyer and the deputy co-authored an article defending an artificial intelligence regulation more favorable to the private sector, as revealed by Núcleo Jornalismo, a member of this journalistic alliance.
Regarding her dual role as lawyer and lobbyist, Bialer said she is a “professional with recognized experience in technology, privacy and data protection, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence; and regularly participates as a speaker at public hearings, seminars, and panel discussions on the aforementioned topics.”

Bialer also said that BFA firm has been advising ITI in Brazil “for many years”, providing “legal and regulatory consulting services, as well as technical support in ITI's discussions with policymakers in the country,” but did not offer further details and said that the activities are “subject to professional confidentiality obligations.”

The firm did not respond if it was representing Meta when it met with the ANPD on behalf of ITI, or whether it sees any conflict of interest in having its lawyers participate in meetings as consultants to the international association while also defending Meta in other proceedings.

Another case in which lobbying in Congress overlapped with litigation is that of Lorenzo Villegas Carrasquilla, a Colombian lawyer who since 2020 has represented Google in a lawsuit against the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC). In 2024, Villegas spoke at a public hearing on a bill that directly affected the tech giant, repeating the very same arguments the company had been making in Colombia’s courts.

In official rulings between 2019 and 2022, the SIC required Google, Meta, and TikTok to comply with Colombia’s regulations on protecting minors’ data, concluding that they were not doing so fully. But the companies sued the regulator before Colombia’s Highest Administrative Court (Consejo de Estado), arguing that the ruling violated their rights because the data processing does not take place in Colombia and therefore, they insisted, Colombian law does not apply to them.

The principle that companies must obey the laws of the countries where their users are located—regardless of where their headquarters are—is known as extraterritoriality. “This is telling companies, ‘even if you are not physically located in our territory, if you are collecting data from our citizens, you must comply with our legislation,’” explained Heidy Balanta, a lawyer specializing in personal data, to this alliance.

Colombian jurists consulted by this journalistic alliance expressed differing opinions on whether the regulator can enforce this principle. In any case, two bills would have resolved the matter had they not been shelved: Bill 156 of 2023 and Bill 152 of 2024. Both proposed that the handling of data collected in Colombia by a responsible party, or by its representative domiciled in Colombian territory, be subject to national data protection law—regardless of whether the data were processed in Colombia or abroad.

At the public hearing, attorney Villegas argued that the bill could affect press freedom—an argument echoed by several civil society representatives—as well as freedom of enterprise. He then raised another concern: the bill “is a disincentive to data processing, particularly in the digital world, from abroad toward Colombia.” He further claimed that the initiative “runs counter to the Political Constitution, which establishes that Colombian laws apply within Colombian territory, to those physically present within Colombian territory.” Villegas did not disclose in Congress his role on the Californian company’s legal team. 

Villegas did not respond why he did not reveal his dual role. He said he was invited to the public hearing as a lawyer expert in technology law, and he agreed to attend because he believes “it is fundamental to offer technical and legal elements to enrich legislative debate.”

ALAI and other allies of the tech companies have taken the same line. A comment on the 2023 bill signed by Nieto, ALAI’s lobbyist, argued that “in a globalized world, where it is possible to provide services anywhere, to insist that all those [services] offered in Colombia must comply with these provisions is a disincentive for ensuring that a wide range of digital services remain available in Colombia.” And María Fernanda Quiñones, director of the Colombian Chamber of Electronic Commerce, said at the above-mentioned public hearing that “a rule with extraterritorial application undermines or discourages the country’s competitiveness.”

The concern for the tech companies is that such regulations create problems for managing and distributing their products internationally. “Big Tech doesn’t like extraterritoriality because it makes them subject to many different laws, and given their presence in so many countries, it creates a heavy compliance burden,” explained Viviana López, an attorney with the Transparency and Digital Rights program at Dejusticia, a think tank that promotes the rule of law in the Global South, to this alliance. “However, one could say the solution is simple: apply the highest protection standard in all countries.” Today, the European Union sets the highest data protection standard for its citizens and obliges tech companies to comply.

For data protection specialist Balanta, the consequence of countries like Colombia being unable to enforce their data protection laws is that Big Tech ends up treating Colombian users “as second-class citizens.” In her words, companies design their products to protect only those living in countries with strict privacy rules, while in other places “citizens often find themselves without recourse because the platform’s design doesn’t make it easy for them to exercise their rights.”

In Colombia, the bills that could resolve the issue are stalling in Congress, and in the courts, a ruling on whether the SIC overstepped in requiring the companies to obey Colombian law could still take years. “That litigation is endless,” said López.

In Brazil, meanwhile, social media platforms’ refusal to comply with national laws was among the arguments used by the Trump administration, this past July, to impose 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian exports to the United States. In its letter  on the tariffs, the Trump government cited court rulings in which the Supreme Court had ordered platforms such as X and Facebook to suspend the accounts of people under investigation who had used them to call for a coup d’état, threaten judges, and spread disinformation. The US Trade Representative also launched an investigation  “because of Brazil’s ongoing attacks on the digital business activities of U.S. companies.” The Trump decision was applauded by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), funded by companies including Google, Meta, and Amazon, as revealed by Agência Pública.

Revolving Doors

Big Tech has also leaned on another strategy to get closer to authorities: hiring people who once held public office, a practice widely known as the revolving door. This journalistic alliance identified at least 59 such cases across Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile and México.

In Brazil, the most notorious case involved former president Michel Temer, who was hired by Google in mid-June 2023 to bolster the company’s lobbying efforts in Congress and act as a “mediator” with lawmakers — as he himself confirmed to Folha de S. Paulo. At the time, Bill 2630/2020, known as the “fake news law,” was still under debate, with expectations it would soon be put to a vote, which never happened. (See full story).

In total, at least 54 lobbyists for tech companies who previously held public sector positions in Brazil, representing 68% of all the lobbyists tracked in the country, according to this investigation. For example, Sérgio Garcia Alves of ALAI himself once worked at Anatel, in the Casa Civil, and at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, before becoming the association’s public policy manager.

In Chile, lawyer Aisén Etcheverry was reprimanded by the Comptroller’s Office for joining a 2019 committee that ruled in favor of Amazon Web Services, where she had worked just months earlier. The sanction did little to slow her rise: she became Minister of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation in March 2023 and, from December 2024 to July 2025, also served as government spokesperson. Her case highlights how ties between officials and tech companies have helped these multinationals secure business.

“The decision that led to the ruling was the result of an open process, in which different proposals were received,” Etcheverry told this alliance. (See full story).

From Watchdog to Cheerleader in Colombia

On May 30, 2024, Worldcoin launched in Colombia. The service scans people’s irises in exchange for money, claiming that the process can “verify humanity” — in other words, provide users with a credential allowing digital services to confirm they are real people and not bots. Tools for Humanity (TfH), Worldcoin’s parent company, was founded by Sam Altman, who also co-founded OpenAI and is one of the most influential figures in the industry. TfH is banned in Brazil.

The very next day, the SICissued a brief press release on its website. The statement warned: “We invite citizens to carefully consider the potential consequences of granting this company access to their iris, since the firm in question has not demonstrated… that this practice does not involve the collection of sensitive personal data.”  The regulator also announced an investigation into TfH to verify compliance with Colombian data protection laws. (The investigation was still ongoing as of September 2025).

Between February and December 2024, lawyer Grefieth Sietta was the delegate superintendent for personal data at the SIC. His office was in charge of the investigation. But on April 2, 2025, no longer at the SIC and now a professor at the Universidad del Rosario’s Law Faculty, Sierra said. “Strict privacy is not good business. We need to break the logics of privacy, because those logics of privacy are what is called monetization,” 

He spoke at an academic event hosted at the university. He further argued that citizens themselves should decide how much of their privacy to cede to companies.

Speaking before Sierra was Lorena Buzón, Public Affairs Director at TfH. She began by thanking Professor Sierra “for conducting these discussions,” before claiming that the company’s product is in fact a “privacy-enhancing technology.”

In a LinkedIn post, Buzón wrote that Sierra had organized the conference. Yet no mention was made of past disputes: neither Sierra the host, nor anyone else, referred to the measures Sierra had once taken against Worldcoin in his role as regulator, nor to the concerns he had repeatedly expressed about the product. Nor did the event address the fact that Worldcoin has faced regulatory troubles in several other countries, precisely due to concerns over how it handles users’ personal data.

Sierra told this alliance that SIC’s investigation was not being conducted by him, but by the director of personal data investigations. Even though this official was his direct subordinate, he claims he never “assumed jurisdiction to investigate TfH.” He also said that the event was organized by the University, that his role was to perform “coordination tasks,” and that neither he nor the institution received any compensation for the conference.

Latam left behind

For users in Latin America, platforms like TikTok, WhatsApp messaging and other Meta’s social networks, YouTube, Google search, and cloud services from Google Cloud or Amazon are indispensable. They use them to talk, get information, store photos and documents, and express their views on the world. So when something goes wrong — for instance, when a young girl falls into the hands of a sexual predator she met in a group on social media — people want to know where to file a complaint and how to flag that dangerous account.

But many users have no idea how to get a platform to listen, how to lodge a complaint, or when they even have the right to do so. It isn’t easy even for well-established civil society organizations. In Colombia, Red Papaz has repeatedly tried to sit down with Big Tech to discuss how to prevent harm to children. “It’s like talking to a wall that tells you upfront it’s not going to do absolutely anything,” Alejandro Castañeda, head of the NGO’s Safe Internet Center, told CLIP and Cuestión Pública.

Nor are the platforms’ protection tools especially effective. In Colombia, a 2025 study by the Communications Regulatory Commission found that only 48% of parents use audiovisual content filters on platforms, and just 34% use parental controls on social networks. In Mexico, a 2022 report by the Federal Telecommunications Institute showed that only 26.2% of household internet users employ any parental control tools. And in the United States, platforms like Discord and Snapchat told Congress in 2024 that fewer than 1% of parents use these tools.

Even when people know these tools exist, there’s no guarantee they work. Initiatives like Circuito, run by the Linterna Verde organization, have documented such injustices. One Colombian cartoonist, falsely accused of spreading hate speech, lost his TikTok account for 10 years. A popular Mexican content creator was suspended from YouTube for posting a video about legal ways to emigrate to Canada. Users with connections or big followings sometimes manage to get such sanctions reversed, but many others don’t.

In much of Latin America, local offices don’t even exist. With some exceptions, issues in Ecuador and Peru are handled from Colombia; Uruguay, Chile, and Paraguay from Argentina; and Central America from Mexico. X, formerly Twitter, shut down all of its Latin American offices and now operates solely from the United States. Brazil, thanks to its market size and tougher regulatory push, is the outlier.

When it comes to financial reporting, many of these platforms don’t even break out revenues, expenses, and tax payments for Latin America, instead they lump them in with other regions. 

As Castañeda from Red Papaz put it, Latin Americans’ use of digital platforms is “inequitable compared with the consumption that users in other countries are enjoying.” That inequity shows up not only in the tools available to them but also in the regulatory safeguards — stronger elsewhere, weaker here.

In Europe, meanwhile, the General Data Protection Regulation allowed citizens in 11 countries to sue Meta to prevent their information from being used to train the company’s artificial intelligence models. Meta was forced to stop and chose not to launch some AI products there.

By contrast, most Latin American users of Meta have no way to prevent the company from exploiting their data for AI training, as the organization Access Now has pointed out. “In most countries in the region there are no data protection laws, and in those where they do exist, they are outdated,” the group explained.

Once again, Brazil is the exception. In June, the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) banned Meta from using Brazilians’ data for AI training. After complying with measures imposed by the ANPD — including not using children’s data and allowing users to opt out — the company resumed the practice with some restrictions. In December, the authority also prohibited X from using minors’ accounts to feed its AI.

This, despite the fact that a majority of people in the region support regulating Big Tech. An Ipsos survey found that “55% of people in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico favor AI regulation — and the proportion rises to 65% among those who say they have a good understanding of the tool.”

The absence of such rules elsewhere works to Big Tech’s advantage. As Alphabet, Google’s parent company, acknowledged in its 2024 annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: “Our compliance with these laws and regulations may be onerous and could, individually or in the aggregate, increase our cost of doing business, make our products and services less useful, limit our ability to pursue certain business practices or offer certain products and services, cause us to change our business models and operations, affect our competitive position relative to our peers, and/or otherwise harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.”

The result is predictable: governments and regulators, hamstrung by weak legal frameworks, scarce resources, and often a limited grasp of complex technologies, face off against powerful corporations. The outcome is strong companies, weak regulation, and unprotected users. It is, as Andrés Hernández of Transparency International Colombia put it, “a completely unbalanced playing field.”

The battle Big Tech won to weaken a regulation that sought to protect children's mental health

The allegations are chilling. Children, some under the age of 14, are being blackmailed with the exposure of intimate videos on social media. In many cases, they are driven to the point of contemplating suicide. One of the most common forms of harassment is via instant messaging, which, once it starts, is difficult to stop. There is also a proliferation of sexually explicit images created with artificial intelligence that include the faces of children and circulate online without any regulations or rules to stop them. 

These cases are the most visible sign of a risk that parents, educators, authorities, and health personnel have been warning about for years. Other content, such as how to commit suicide, is also a cause for concern. A study conducted in 2024 by the University of Los Andes found that 1 in 5 Colombian children reported having seen ways to harm or injure themselves on the internet, and 17% consulted ways to take their own lives. The majority of those who viewed this content were women.

"There were bloodstains in his closet, and when I took him to the doctor, his arm was all cut up," says Lesley, a mother in Bogotá, about the first mental health crisis she noticed in her son. That was the first sign of a downward spiral that led to a psychiatric diagnosis and two hospitalizations. At the time, he was 14 years old. He had recently received his own cell phone and computer.

"We always trusted," says Lesley, "that the decisions he would make would be the right ones." But she soon began to suspect that what he was doing online was influencing the problem. His psychiatrists agreed and asked Leslie to try to set limits on his content consumption, but she couldn't do it. Not only because he is much more digitally savvy than she is, but also because his relationship with devices and platforms is problematic. "When his computer breaks, it's like his life is over," she says. "His tantrums became aggressive. They were physical attacks for limiting his computer use."

When Congress tried to legislate on the issue, the interests of the so-called Big Tech companies (such as Google and Meta) clashed with those seeking to better protect minors. It's not personal: it's business. For Juan David Gutiérrez, a professor at the School of Government at the University of the Andes, "private companies want legislation that does not increase their operating costs" and "they will want to block bills that prevent them from operating under the conditions they want."

This dispute was evident in the approval of bill 029/24S on mental health, authored by Representative Olga Lucía Velásquez (Green Party). The initiative sought to ensure that platforms comply with regulations agreed upon with the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC) to stop distribution of content that "threatens" the integrity, well-being, and physical and mental health of children and adolescents. It went through two debates in the House and one in the Senate without attracting much attention until it was time for its final debate at the end of 2024.

From that moment on, the technology industry lobby moved its silent phalanx. With the seductive force of its influence, built up over years of invitations, meetings, and events with congressmen, it managed to thwart this regulatory purpose. This was identified by the Centro Lationamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP) and Cuestión Pública, partners in the collaborative investigation La Mano Invisible de las Big Tech (The Invisible Hand of Big Tech), led by Agencia Pública de Brasil and CLIP, which brought together 17 media outlets who investigated Big Tech influence actions in 13 countries.

Big Tech used a well-oiled machine of lobbyists, lawyers, and allies who approach or visit congressmen to express proposals, concerns, or interests on the issues they are legislating. This scafolding—which is legal—participates in public hearings or meetings on bills. It even co-organizes academic events with legislators. 

This journalistic alliance asked the companies and individuals involved in this lobbying operation whether their economic interests prevailed over the well-being of their users in the discussion of this bill. Amazon responded that this is not an accurate description of events, without providing further details. Google, Meta, and the Latin American Internet Association did not respond directly to the question. TikTok had not responded to a questionnaire sent by this journalistic alliance, until deadline.

The article of contention

Bringing a law into force in Colombia is a lengthy process. Each initiative has up to two years, or two legislative periods, to complete the process. The Mental Health bill sought to amend the law that had regulated mental health care since 2013. It was filed on July 25, 2023, in the House of Representatives to be approved before June 20, 2025. During that time, it had to pass four mandatory debates: the first two in committee and plenary session in the House, and then the same in the Senate. It also had to go through a possible reconciliation to resolve any differences between the texts approved in the two chambers.

The initiative—unique in Colombia for its scope in this area—succeeded. But there was an invisible hand at work. In order to survive the political negotiations, it ended up sacrificing one of its most ambitious promises: to protect children and adolescents from harmful content on digital platforms. Instead, it left Big Tech in charge of a regulatory function that, according to the authors of the bill, required the participation of the state.

That promise was embodied in Article 8, which included two points that were at the heart of the controversy. The first was to grant the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC) the power to intervene in the formulation of codes of conduct for digital platforms, a concept known as "co-regulation." The second was the possibility of sanctioning those platforms if they failed to comply with the agreements in those codes. These were the sharpest edges of a law that, otherwise, aroused little controversy.

These points remained in the bill until it was approved in its first debate in the Senate on October 22 of that year. As confirmed by this journalistic alliance with various sources, the technology industry and its lobbyists began their influence campaign from that day until December 16, when the final debate was scheduled.

When this happens, the activity goes far beyond Congress. In a matter of days, two ministries, civil society organizations, trade associations, and regulators sent comments on the bill. "Once the debates began, comments and requests for meetings were received from interested parties," Ana Paola Agudelo, senator for the Mira Party and coordinator of the initiative, told this alliance.  

Big Tech's six to one in Congress

It was November 18, shortly after 2 p.m., when six representatives of the big tech companies arrived at Congress, one by one: Irene Velandia from Google; Brian Townsend from Meta; Gabriel Parra from TikTok; Aura María Londoño and Santiago Orduz from Amazon; and Pablo Nieto from the Latin American Internet Association (ALAI), the regional trade association that brings together these four companies and ten others. 

According to the minutes, they were going to see Senator Agudelo, the bill's sponsor. What happened after that visit was decisive for the direction of the Mental Health Law.

"Ana Paola did tell me that the companies were very concerned about the bill," said a source who was aware of these conversations and asked not to be named. They were concerned "whether or not what was being proposed could be considered censorship."

Agudelo admitted to Cuestión Pública and CLIP that these meetings did take place and that they sought to "hear concerns and comments regarding the articles." 

We asked Senator Agudelo and each of these individuals and companies about the topics discussed at that meeting, and they declined to comment on what was said.

The “censorship” argument also appeared in a public letter that Nieto, ALAI's regional manager of Public Policy for the Andean Zone, sent to Congress on December 6. In it, he said that the powers of the CRC could "restrict information diversity" and lead to prior censorship. He also pointed out that the Commission had no experience in regulating digital content. 

The Karisma Foundation sent its own opinion, expressing concern about another issue: it argued that the CRC's new function could "exceed the commission's capacity": there would be so much content to review that it would be unable to cope without sufficient resources. The foundation was also concerned about the mention of "self-regulation" in other parts of the bill, an observation that foreshadowed what would ultimately happen: it said that such a mention could strip the CRC of its regulatory powers.

Amid the tension, the Regulatory Commission responded that there could be no talk of censorship because "in no case (...) would it remove content from users or platforms," but rather it could impose "subsequent sanctions" after the content was published and only in the event of non-compliance with the rules.

The effect of the lobbying was seen in the text of the bill, submitted for final debate by Agudelo and Fabián Díaz, the other senator presenting the bill, on November 21. Both removed the word "co-regulation." However, they maintained the Commission's power to make recommendations to platforms to moderate content and to sanction those that failed to comply. That text, the report says, was "the product of observations and consensus between the CRC and representatives of digital platforms" and, according to several sources, sought to reassure Big Tech.

Despite this concession, the tech companies continued to push the envelope. In a speech by Green Alliance Party Senator Jonathan Pulido Hernández, better known as Jota Pe, he acted as spokesperson for two industry associations: "I have here, for example, Asomóvil and CCIT [who] say: 'we have not approved Article 8 because we believe it borders on censorship.'"

He was referring to Asomóvil, which represents mobile operators, and the Colombian Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications (CCIT), which brings together dozens of companies in the sector. In the same speech, Jota Pe cited a document signed by seven industry associations—including Asomóvil and CCIT—and a civil society organization, appealing to many of the same arguments already put forward by ALAI. In a proposal, which he filed together with Senator Alfredo Deluque Zuleta from La Guajira, he called for the elimination of Article 8.

Camilo Rojas Chitiva, Asomóvil's regulatory manager, told this journalistic alliance that the association did not interact directly with Senator Hernández. "Much less did it do so in terms of approving or not approving, or giving the green light or not," he said. The CCIT did not respond to a questionnaire sent by this journalistic alliance.

In response to this alliance, Senator Jota Pe clarified that he did not meet "with union spokespeople or representatives of any particular sector. To form my position on the bill, I took into account the presentation made by the initiative's sponsors and the arguments raised during the plenary debate."

For his part, Deluque responded to this alliance by saying that "the initial proposal for elimination responded to the need to open the debate on the article, which, according to the analysis of my legislative team and my own review, presented possible risks [...] that could affect freedom of expression."

When Hernández stepped down from the podium, negotiations began at a desk in the Elliptical Hall. On one side was Representative Velásquez, author of the bill and proponent of co-regulation with the platforms. On the other side was the camp aligned with the arguments of the tech companies, made up of Senators Jota Pe, Deluque, and David Luna.

The allies of Big Tech

All three belong to the First Senate Committee. Jota Pe was a well-known YouTuber from Bucaramanga who received a golden plaque from YouTube, a Google company, for reaching one million followers on his account. Deluque is a senator from La Guajira who was a telecommunications executive and union leader in that sector. Luna was ICT Minister and then director of a technology industry union.

Luna went from being ICT Minister between 2014 and 2018, during Juan Manuel Santos' second term, to being the first director of Alianza In, a technology entrepreneurship union that also signed the letter. Although he spoke in plenary against Article 8, he did not vote and stated that he was prevented from doing so. Nor did he participate in the proposal of his two colleagues.

Deluque has legislated on technology. In 2023, he was one of the authors of a bill that sought to create a digital security agency, and in the last legislative session, he promoted four other initiatives on digital issues, including "fair regulation for transportation platforms."     

He is also the congressman who received the most visits from representatives of technology associations between September 2022 and October 2024, according to information obtained through a right of petition to Congress submitted by this journalistic alliance. The Big Tech lobbyist who visited him most during that period was Santiago Orduz of AWS, who recorded eight visits to Congress authorized by Deluque. He was followed by Santiago Pinzón of the National Association of Entrepreneurs (ANDI) with seven visits, and Aura María Londoño Sánchez of Amazon with two.

Deluque made his position on the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) clear at the Mexico Digital Summit, a conference he attended as a speaker in September 2024 to talk about inclusion and AI. There, he explained how "we had the good sense in the Colombian Congress to put the brakes on all regulation; there were more or less 10 bills about regulating AI." The trip, as confirmed by the senator, was paid for by a private think tank based in Miami called CCLATAM, which promotes dialogue on public policy around innovation, as stated in its mission.

Between 2021 and 2025, Deluque attended 16 international events related to the technology sector as a congressman, as confirmed to this alliance (see details in multimedia element). All were financed by the organizers, except for one that he paid for himself, according to the senator.

The Colombian Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications (CCIT), one of the associations that "had not given its approval" to Article 8—and which signed the joint letter read by Senator Jota Pe in plenary—partially financed one of those trips in 2024. This was a visit to the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, and to a ministerial summit in Madrid from February 17 to March 2. Among the members of the CCIT are Amazon, Google, and Meta, three of the four companies that visited Senator Agudelo when the Mental Health bill was being discussed. 

In 2025, the CCIT partially funded another trip to Spain for Deluque, between February 24 and March 7. This time it was a roundtable on technology regulation in Barcelona, which took place simultaneously with the 2025 edition of the MWC. The topic to be discussed was precisely "regulatory principles to balance the playing field of the digital ecosystem with the user at the center."

Could this funding constitute a potential conflict of interest? Andrés Hernández, director of Transparency for Colombia, says it could. "The best way to have resolved this would have been a clear disclosure of the congressman's activities," Hernández said. In fact, Deluque never declared this conflict in the final debate on the law. "The absence of such an explanation does leave a feeling that there could have been a significant risk of undue influence," Hernández added.

Senator Alfredo Deluque responded to this journalistic alliance, saying, "I do not agree with that characterization. Participation in official multilateral events cannot be equated with undue influence, as these are public, open, and pluralistic settings (...) The two events in which partial support from the CCIT is noted were strictly official in nature, with the participation of Colombian government and legislative delegations." The CCIT did not respond to questions sent by this journalistic alliance.

Senator Deluque's closeness to industry representatives was on display at an event at the Externado University of Colombia in May 2025. The speakers were Big Tech employees, civil society representatives, and other congressmen. In a speech, Brian Townsend, Meta's Public Policy Manager for Spanish-speaking South America, acknowledged the senator's openness: "I am grateful to Senator Deluque for involving us in the development of public policy." 

Neither Meta nor Townsend responded to questions about the executive's remarks. The company sent the following statement: "Like many companies in different industries and geographies, we interact with officials, trade groups, and organizations to share information about our products and services and to contribute to discussions that may impact Meta or the experiences of users on our platforms."

The anti-regulatory victory

According to two sources consulted, the tech companies' lobbying strategy was to sink Article 8 or remove the sanctions and new powers it gave to the CRC. In other words, what Senators Jota Pe and Deluque proposed.

The strategy worked. The text approved by the Senate was tailored for the tech companies. Not only did it deny the CRC the power to co-regulate harmful content circulating on digital services and sanction companies. It also upheld, in the words of Senator Agudelo, "the self-regulation that the platforms have asked of us." In other words, it kept in their hands the exclusive responsibility for moderating content that is harmful to children and adolescents.

As things stand, each platform will be able to continue defining its own rules autonomously and decide what it allows or does not allow. This includes how much content about hateful behavior or incitement to violence it tolerates. Because there are no universal standards, what may be considered a hate crime or abusive behavior in one place may be protected by the right to free expression in another.

In general, the most popular platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, take measures to prevent some of the most harmful content. For example, on these platforms, searching for the word "suicide" does not display content, but rather refers to a help panel with national helplines and channels or expert suggestions. They also have different types of parental controls and directly prohibit different types of harmful content.

As the bill originated in the Chamber of Deputies and the text approved there provided for co-regulation and sanctions, it had to be reconciled in order to deliver a single bill for presidential approval.

In the latter instance, the pressure did not let up. Pablo Nieto, from ALAI, sent a new concept on February 26 asking that the wording that came out of the Senate be maintained. The Colombian Chamber of Electronic Commerce did the same seven days earlier.

And Big Tech won again. The Mental Health Law was approved as it came from the Senate, without co-regulation or sanctions for them. 

For Velásquez, this is the only loophole in the law, as "sanctions generate greater joint responsibility." The two senators who presented the bill, Fabián Díaz and Ana Paola Agudelo, expressed similar views separately. "Self-regulation is a necessary measure, but clearly not absolute," said Díaz.

This concern also exists among experts in digital rights. Lucía Camacho, public policy coordinator for the organization Derechos Digitales, said that as it stands, the law perpetuates a state of affairs that does not work: "The self-regulation approach is insufficient because it needs complementary efforts of active regulation by the states," she said.

For its part, the Karisma Foundation pointed out in a communication to this alliance that "the inclusion of the word 'self-regulation' in the bill is problematic. Although the final rule is unclear, we believe it could be used by social media platforms to refuse to comply with orders from state agencies."

Another alternative would be that, if the state does not have a role in regulation, it will function independently of companies. In other words, "it should be able to serve as a counterweight to the gaps, or errors, or decisions [of the platforms] that respond more to their business model than to the public interest," explained Catalina Botero Marino, who was part of Meta's Oversight Board. "And that is very difficult," she added. 

Botero added that although she believes it is better for self-regulation to "exist than not exist," she considers "co-regulation" to be better.

Senator Jota Pe responded, "I don't know if they 'took the teeth out' of the article, as some point out... Self-regulation by platforms was not understood as the only measure, but as part of a comprehensive strategy that combines prevention, education, institutional oversight, and coordinated state action."

Behind the scenes

This journalistic alliance identified that the technology sector lobbyist who visited Congress most often during that period (between July 2022 and August 2025) was José Daniel López, a former House Representative (Cambio Radical party), who is currently the director of Alianza IN, an applications guild. The second was Pablo Nieto, from the Latin American Internet Association, who visits Congress at least once a month on average.

López responded to this alliance by saying that "this figure must be contextualized by the fact that the Congress facilities house the offices of more than 280 senators and representatives, as well as their staff members," and that engaging in these interactions with members of Congress "is legitimate and an essential part of our work as a union." 

In a statement sent to this alliance, ALAI assures that its employees' interactions "with government officials and parliamentarians are carried out through the usual formal channels of communication for each country."

Founded in Uruguay in 2015, ALAI is funded by 14 technology companies. Among these are Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok, Rappi, and Mercado Libre. In Colombia, its visible face is Nieto: a young political scientist who has visited congressmen in their offices 24 times, as documented by this alliance. He has also participated in at least 10 congressional events and five public events with legislators or public officials since October 2023, when he joined ALAI after serving as a legislative advisor to the Ministry of Finance. 

"Our team is made up of top-level professionals who carry out all their activities with seriousness, professionalism, and in accordance with our code of ethics, our statutes, and in strict compliance with the laws of each country," says ALAI in response to this journalistic alliance.

In April 2025, ALAI organized the "Annual Digital Policy Dialogues" in Mexico City. Analysis of public photos of the event confirmed the attendance of 15 legislators and officials from 10 countries. Five of them are Colombian: Representatives Diego Caicedo, Ciro Rodríguez, Daniel Restrepo Carmona, and Irma Luz Herrera, and Senator Carlos Guevara. The latter two belong to the Mira Party, the same party as the senator sponsoring the bill, Ana Paola Agudelo. Caicedo, Guevara, and Herrera confirmed to this journalistic alliance that ALAI paid their travel expenses. 

Rodríguez did not respond directly, but referred the request to the House of Representatives Secretary, which has not responded. Carmona has not yet provided the information.

A congressman from another country who attended the event in Mexico told this journalistic alliance that ALAI paid for his economy class travel and lodged him in a "no-frills" hotel in the city center. "They convey their ideas, they don't ask for anything in return. They don't make you feel uncomfortable because they don't pressure you. It's a friendly tone and an exchange of ideas," said this source, who asked to remain anonymous. ALAI did not respond to specific questions about the event.

The mental health debt owed to children and adolescents

"Often we are not heard, or they believe that what we are doing is not enough," said Brian Townsend, Meta's executive for this region, at the event in which Senator Deluque also participated last May. According to Representative Olga Velásquez, experts consulted, and the CRC, Big Tech is not doing enough to reduce its negative impact. 

The role of these digital platforms was part of the discussion from the first debate on the Mental Health bill. On the one hand, because at least 70% of children and adolescents in Colombia access content on the internet, 61% have their own mobile device, and 40% have social media accounts, according to a study published in 2025 by the CRC. 

On the other hand, because the concern to improve mental health coverage and quality in the country, especially for children, is becoming increasingly urgent. 

The Montserrat Clinic, a psychiatric institution in Bogotá, opened a ward for adolescents in 2022. "Before, it was very rare to see one or two minors hospitalized," María Fernanda Bonilla, coordinator of the child and adolescent unit, told this alliance. "Now we have 20 beds and sometimes we even have to expand to other units because we can't keep up with the demand for care for children."

This is just one symptom of what the specialist calls "an increase in mental health consultations for children and adolescents." After years of relative stability and a decline during the pandemic, official figures in Colombia reveal a 41.2% increase in suicide attempts among minors under the age of 17 between 2022 and 2021. The figure continues to rise by 0.7% in 2023.

Concerns about mental health led Congress to file eight bills related to this issue between 2022 and 2023. All were shelved because they did not meet the deadlines for debate.

Only one of them, proposed by members of Congress from the Conservative Party, questioned the role of social media and sought to adopt measures to prevent, among other things, addiction to it. How this would be achieved was unclear, and the proposal did not include control over the content hosted on digital platforms. But it did not even make it to debate.

Dr. Bonilla warns that mental health problems can develop due to various factors. Many of the educators, activists, academics, industry representatives, and politicians consulted agreed that the care of children and adolescents is a responsibility shared by many sectors: families, educational institutions, the state, among others. As Senator Diaz said, the problem "will not be solved solely and exclusively by regulating digital content."

But social media algorithms play a role in mental health that cannot be ignored, Dr. Bonilla pointed out. "If you start searching for or viewing content from people who are exposing death or suicide, the algorithm starts to bring up more and more. And the fact that the person is seeing more people who want to commit suicide, or more content about death on social media, can worsen their emotional state."

But Congress decided to take away the state's ability to counterbalance that algorithm. And it did so because, contrary to what Townsend said, Big Tech was listened to. Perhaps too much.

This investigation—which took nine months and covered 13 countries—is led by Agência Pública in Brazil and the Centro Lationamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP), together with 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 (US); N+ (Mexico); Tempo (Indonesia); Crikey (Australia), and the support of journalism advocacy organizations Reporters Without Borders (international) and El Veinte (Colombia).

All authors: Natalia Viana, María Teresa Ronderos, Jose Luis Peñarredonda, Pablo Medina, Juliana dal Piva, Laura Scofield, Guilherme Cavalcanti, Iván Ruiz, Sofía Costa, Sofia Schurig, Rodolfo Almeida, Sérgio Spagnuolo, Igor Mello, Luiza Souto, Mónica Almeida, Paúl Mena, Andrea Rincón, Edier Buitrago, Francisca Skoknic, Gabriela Pizarro, Alberto Pradilla, Krisna Pradipt, Raymundus Rikang, Romina Cáceres Morales, Josué Congo, Alejandro Valdez, Jazmin Acuna, Alejandro Rebossio, Sandra Crucianelli, Justin Hendrix, Daniel Howden, Beatriz Ramalho da Silva, Riccardo Coluccini, Carly Penrose, Cecil Rosner, Julia Gavarrete, Luisa Fernanda López, Ángela Cantador, Jair Robelo, Rigoberto Carvajal, Bianca Muniz, Mayra Báez, Lorena Morgana, Marina Dias, Jade Drummond, Milena Giacomini, Emiliana García, Anton Nilsson, Peter Goenaghan, Lucas Amin, May Bulman