Soros Gave $17.6M to Leftist Group Pressuring Facebook and TikTok to Censor So-Called Election Disinfo

Another group heavily financed by liberal billionaire George Soros is joining a growing network of organizations he funds calling on Big Tech to do more to censor so-called election “disinformation” before the midterms.

Leftist group Global Witness released a co-authored piece of propaganda disguised as an “investigation” with New York University’s Cyber Security for Democracy team (C4D) whining that Facebook and TikTok weren’t censoring enough. The group’s Oct. 21 press release on its report, headlined “Facebook and TikTok fail to block deceptive ads with blatant US midterms disinformation,” claimed its “experiment” was engineered to “determine how well social media platforms are living up to their promises to stop disinformation that can destabilise democratic processes.” Soros’ Open Society Foundations gave Global Witness $17,657,000 between 2016 and 2020 alone. The group has offices in London, Brussels and Washington D.C.

The group complained that TikTok “approved 90 percent of ads featuring misleading and false election disinformation” while Facebook allegedly “approved a significant number of similarly inaccurate and false ads.” Global Witness Senior Advisor John Lloyd tried to drum up fear about a supposed threat to “democracy” if Big Tech companies didn’t up the ante on their censorship operations: 

It is high time they got their houses in order and started properly resourcing the detection and prevention of disinformation, before it’s too late. Our democracy rests on their willingness to act.

Multiple media outlets like The New York Times and The Hill gobbled up and regurgitated Global Witness’ talking points without mentioning the group’s financial ties to Soros:

• The New York Times: “TikTok failed to stop most misleading political ads in a test run by researchers.”
• The Hill: “TikTok, Facebook failed to remove ads spreading election misinformation: report.”
• Fortune: “TikTok let through 90% of ads spreading baseless claims around U.S. midterms, new report finds.”
• Associated Press: “Report: TikTok bad at culling US election misinformation ads.”
• The Guardian: “‘We risk another crisis’: TikTok in danger of being major vector of election misinformation.”

Global Witness, however, praised YouTube for its obsession with censoring election content while still finding room to suggest it doesn’t go far enough in censoring election content in Brazil. Could that be because Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is an ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump? Bolsonaro is currently in the middle of a highly contested election against leftist and disgraced former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva. 

“Only YouTube succeeded both in detecting the ads and suspending the channel carrying them, though this is in glaring contrast to the platform’s record in Brazil, where similar ads were approved,” Global Witness and C4D wrote in the report.

YouTube, in particular, certainly seems to be taking its cues from Soros-funded groups. The Soros-funded Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) spearheaded an Oct. 13 open letter signed by 11 other liberal groups pining for Big Tech companies like YouTube to “[t]ake immediate steps to curb the spread of voting disinformation in the midterms and future elections and to help prevent the undermining of our democracy.” LCCHR, in addition to six of the 12 signatories, were funded to the tune of $30,325,500 by Soros between 2016 and 2020.

But that’s not all.

The Soros-funded International Fact-Checking Network at the liberal Poynter Institute for Media Studies also put election pressure on YouTube. The IFCN published an open letter Jan. 12 to YouTube demanding it silence free speech on issues such as elections and COVID-19. “The whole world witnessed the consequences of disinformation when a violent mob assaulted the U.S. Capitol last year. From the eve of the U.S. presidential election to the day after, YouTube videos supporting the ‘fraud’ narrative were watched more than 33 million times,” the letter whined. 

Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

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