Radical billionaire George Soros spent $30 million on efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to censor so-called “disinformation” on their platforms, financial records have revealed.
Soros has been funding a network of groups that have been publicly urging the heads of major online platforms to ramp up censorship ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
The same network of groups reportedly pressured Big Tech companies to censor “disinformation” in the run-up to the 2020 election, most notably forcing them to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
The groups are now applying heavier-handed pressure tactics by publicly calling on Silicon Valley executives to censor information before the midterms.
On October 13, the Soros-funded Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) spearheaded an open letter demanding tougher censorship online.
The letter is signed by 11 other liberal groups and calls on Big Tech CEOs 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.”
The letter agonized over how “[t]he 2022 midterm elections are only a few weeks away, but online disinformation continues to confuse, intimidate, and harass voters, suppress the right to vote, and otherwise disrupt our democracy.”
The groups addressed the letter to:
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai
- Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal
- YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki
- TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew
- Snap (formerly Snapchat) CEO Evan Spiegel
- Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri
Between 2016 and 2020, Soros gave a staggering $30,325,500 to at least seven of the 12 total signatories.
Soros’ huge investment in the effort was revealed following an analysis by MRC Business.
MRC analyzed data from Soros’ Open Society Foundations database and Foundation Directory Online.
The letter doesn’t only target election-related posts on Big Tech platforms, however.
It also demands that action is taken against political candidates:
[T]here is very little in your 2022 policies that reflects the ongoing and new challenges facing us as the midterms approach.
Many of the bad actors and election deniers have continued and stepped up their online spread of false information since 2020, and some are even on the ballots for elected office in 2022.
The policies and actions by platforms must do more to specifically combat these trends in 2022 and beyond.
The letter railed that Big Tech platforms haven’t done enough to censor so-called “mis/disinformation.”
It urges more activism on the censorship front.
“While your companies have recently made announcements regarding 2022 policy updates to combat election disinformation, we have yet to see meaningful steps on the actions that we requested in” another May 2022 petition signed by more than 120 groups.
The latest letter endorsed actions by several platforms — including Facebook and Twitter — to update “voter interference and disinformation policies.”
The leftist groups praised how the efforts “demonstrate that your companies understand the importance of addressing voting disinformation.”
However, the letter complains that “the policies have little or no effect unless you enforce them continually and consistently.”
Censorship before a U.S. election is not a new phenomenon.
A 2020 MRC poll found that 45 percent of Biden voters weren’t fully aware of the New York Post story exposing alleged corrupt dealings involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter after the reports were whitewashed by Big Tech and the media in the name of blocking so-called “disinformation.”
Had Americans been fully aware of the scandal, the poll found, 9.4 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for him, the survey found.
MRC President Brent Bozell fired back over the new revelations about the Soros-funded censorship effort ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“Soros spent $30M on groups trying to get Big Tech to censor conservatives ahead of the midterms,” Bozell said in a statement.
