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Facebook again hires Sebastian Aleksander for 2017 session

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Social networking platform Facebook has again hired Sebastian Aleksander for the 2017 Legislative Session, lobbyist registration records reviewed Tuesday.

This makes the third year in a row that Aleksander will have represented the social media behemoth, based in Menlo Park, California. Among other major websites, he also represents Yahoo! Inc., records show.

Facebook’s last significant interest in Florida legislation was a “digital assets” bill backed by state Sen. Dorothy Hukill, a Port Orange Republican.

It was aimed at ensuring that a person could designate control of their online accounts, including social media, after her or his death.

Facebook at first was against the bill because, the company said, it conflicted with federal online privacy laws.

Hukill later amended the measure so that someone has to give “explicit consent” to someone else to access and control a particular account. The digital assets legislation (SB 494) became law earlier this year.

A request for comment was pending with Aleksander as of Tuesday morning.

Before joining Florida Politics, journalist and attorney James Rosica was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He attended journalism school in Washington, D.C., working at dailies and weekly papers in Philadelphia after graduation. Rosica joined the Tallahassee Democrat in 1997, later moving to the courts beat, where he reported on the 2000 presidential recount. In 2005, Rosica left journalism to attend law school in Philadelphia, afterwards working part time for a public-interest law firm. Returning to writing, he covered three legislative sessions in Tallahassee for The Associated Press, before joining the Tribune’s re-opened Tallahassee bureau in 2013. He can be reached at [email protected].

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