What happens in France if I personally fund a bunch of billboards to advertise for a politician?

While, the campaigns do receive tons of a money there's also a lot of non-campaign expenditure in the way of things called PACs/Super-PACs which basically produce the same ads that you could see from a candidate minus the "and I'm X and I approve this message.".

That was the case until 2010. Controversially, the Supreme Court then found the First Amendment/freedom of speech prevents the federal government from restricting spending by corporations, unions, nonprofits, etc.

I'm curious how France deals with external entities running influence campaigns on global platforms in this context? What prevents external entities (countries or corporations) from effectively buying elections in France?

Which global platforms? I can talk of Canada and every social media network that sell ads in Canada also has an office in the country and must follow laws.

Of course the organic reach can be manipulated, but the influence seems to be still somewhat limited.

Most of the money spent in US political ads is to raise more money. It's hardly corporations buying elections.

It's an election industrial complex, a self-licking ice cream cone! It's amazing how the election season gets longer and longer.

The state fully reimburses the campaign budget to each candidate?

Yes, if you get >=5% of the votes!

Our system isn't perfect though, it's a two-round system that has non-linearities, notably the Condorcet paradox : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox

There is that too but you can't win this way now. Every year on the US tax form you can contribute $3 to publicly financed campaigns.

There have been attempts but when corporations are considered people limitations on their "speech" all eventually fail

I hate this phrasing.

Corporations aren't people.

The finding was that people dont lose their rights when working together via a corporation.

If you can buy a political sign and your friend can buy a sign, then the two of you can buy a sign together.

The issue is then the theoretical contract of the two of you together takes no real repercussion for breaking the law, whereas separately if you committed crimes independently then you could be put in jail. We don’t have capital punishment for corporations, and we should.

How does that argue against people still having rights.

Corporate death penalty exists, it is called bankruptcy. It is called criminal liability and people are put in jail.

You just seem to disagree with how harsh (or not) the penalties are. However, that doesn't say anything about taking away rights.

This largely isn't true. The most effective way to shield yourself from crime is to just be a corporation. It's trivial to kill hundreds, even thousands, if the accountability is spread out against enough people.

Famously Bayer Pharmaceuticals knowingly sold HIV infected products in Africa. How many people got HIV? And how many then passed it on, and then how many of those passed it on? I don't know. I'm guessing the amount of people who died of AIDS is pretty much impossible to quantify. Nobody went to jail. Of course, this is an obvious example. It's not so obvious when you consider the role companies like McDonald's have played in people's deaths.

We even have separate terms for corporations, like fraud. Fraud is really just stealing. If I commit some type of fraud and get 10 million dollars, sure I might be fined. Might. If I steal 10 million dollars as an individual, then I go to prison.

The only time this doesn't happen is if, and only if, there's an individual within a corporation acting alone or calling the shots. This is trivial to avoid. The game of corporate America is really just accountability management. I mean, who do you jail if you don't even know who did it?

Ultimately though, the problem with corporations have direct influences over elections is that they inherently have different incentives than individuals. What's best for our citizens and what's best for Corp X rarely align. In fact, for many industries they're directly contrary! Tobacco thrives off of making people sick and addicted, and sure, that one is obvious. What about automobile manufacturers? Isn't it in their interest to have the most shit public infrastructure possible? And... doesn't that effect poorer Americans the most?

Or what about oil? Isn't it in their interest to make the air and water as poisonous as possible, because they can cut costs that way? And what about fast food? Isn't it in their interest to makes the ingredients and health of their food as difficult to understand as possible? And on and on and on.

Individuals would never advocate any of that, not in a million years. So, the speech isn't the same. IMO, you just can't compare them like that, because the incentives are way different. The majority of companies directly benefit from screwing you over in a plethora of ways. Why should those opinions matter? What good does that do for you or me?

I think you are still taking issue with the severity of penalties, not legal immunity.

Should someone go to jail for HIV deaths in Africa, or heart attacks from McDonalds? I dont think the comparison to individuals is as clear as you make it out to be. We dont charge surgeons

This is beside really besides the point tho when it comes to elections. Corporations are made up of people. If you restrict them, you are also restricting the individuals. Maybe we should- A lot of countries do! I just dont get why people get into all this complex theory about corporate personhood instead of just making that claim. If you dont like corporate donations, are you really OK with Gates or whoever making a $100M donation? do you really think corporate donations are somehow worse?

> We dont charge surgeons

We definitely do if they act in malice. "Do no harm" and all. I guess then it comes down to how stupid you think corporate leadership is.

IMO, most of the time they're not stupid. I don't think Tabacco executives genuinely though getting people hooked on nicotine was fine. Not to mention they did everything they could to make the occurrence of nicotine more potent...

> are you really OK with Gates or whoever making a $100M donation? do you really think corporate donations are somehow worse?

1. I'm not 100% okay with the ultra-wealthy influencing elections, because their interests are also at odds with the average American person (who is who your representatives should serve!), but:

2. I do think it's slightly better than corporations influencing elections. Bill Gates is still a person and probably doesn't advocate things that directly harm humanity. The same is not true for corporations - many of them literally exist solely to harm humanity (and make money in the process).