George Soros’s Open Society Foundations network has given millions of dollars to a liberal nonprofit group demanding social media companies censor “election disinformation” ahead of the November midterm elections, records show.
In October, Global Witness co-released a study on “election disinformation” in the United States with New York University’s Cybersecurity for Democracy initiative.
Global Witness, a London-based nonprofit group that is calling on TikTok, Meta, and YouTube to ramp up content moderation, has received over $17.6 million from OSF’s network, according to tax records and grants disclosed in OSF’s database.
Global Witness was founded in 1993 and has offices in London, Belgium, and Washington, D.C. It operates in dozens of countries, including Brazil, Uganda, Ukraine, Russia, and Indonesia. The organization, which has an associated Global Witness Foundation in California, reported an income of roughly $1.5 million in 2021 and spent about $1.14 million on “environmental and human rights research and campaigning,” according to tax records.
In addition to fighting alleged disinformation, Global Witness engages in climate activism and tracks “ill-gotten money and influence through the global financial and political system,” according to its website.
Between 2016 and 2020, OSF’s Foundation to Promote Open Society and Open Society Policy Center gave money to Global Witness for mostly “general support,” records show. In 2019, Global Witness took $268,000 from FPOC for “investigative research” in the Middle East and North Africa region, records show.
The two are major left-wing grant-makers involved in a variety of liberal advocacy, including in the areas of gun control, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, and environmentalism. OSPC Executive Director Tom Perriello is a former Democratic congressman who also was president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the 501(c)(4) lobbying arm of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
“We have already witnessed Big Tech’s blatant bias during the 2020 election when they wrongfully declared the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop as misinformation,” House Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told the Washington Examiner.
“Giving Big Tech any more influence over our elections is a threat to democracy, and it comes as no surprise that a Soros-backed organization wants to allow Big Tech control over what the American people can read, see, or hear, actively pushing its bias against conservatives to influence our elections,” said Stefanik.
Global Witness and NYU found in their October study that TikTok approved 90% of ads with allegedly “misleading and false election disinformation.” Facebook approved allegedly false ads, while YouTube “not only prevented all election disinformation ads from appearing in the U.S., it also banned our channel outright,” according to the study.
TikTok rejected one ad that said voters have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to vote, but that same ad was accepted by Facebook, the study said.
“We tested YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook’s ability to detect election-related disinformation ahead of the midterm elections, using examples we sourced from themes of disinformation identified by the FEC (Federal Elections Commission), CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and civil society,” said the study, explaining it focused on “disinformation” in the five battleground states of Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
At the end of the study, Global Witness and NYU called on the platforms to “publish their pre-election risk assessment for the United States” and “urgently increase the content moderation capabilities and integrity systems deployed to mitigate risk before, during and after the upcoming US midterm elections.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner it’s “no surprise” Soros is backing Global Witness.
“All of the left’s institutions are focused on censoring their political opponents,” said Fitton. “They’ll do it through the government. They’ll do it through private pressure.”
Global Witness published several investigations on its website that discuss “disinformation” in the context of social media companies. One March article, “The climate divide: How Facebook’s algorithm amplifies climate disinformation,” calls out the “QAnon conspiracy” for its role in the “January 6th Capitol insurrection, demonstrating the ability of online narratives to become real-world violence.”
The March article requests governments across the world to “step in and legislate against the power of Big Tech to shape our realities in dangerous and divisive ways that threaten to derail progress toward tackling the greatest challenge our planet collectively faces.”
“We are very grateful to OSF and the many other charitable foundations that fund us and support our work,” a spokeswoman for Global Witness told the Washington Examiner.
Debates surrounding “misinformation” and “disinformation” have ramped up as the midterm elections approach, with many Democratic lawmakers and candidates voicing support for increased content moderation.
Leaked documents obtained by the Intercept and reported on Monday show the Department of Homeland Security coordinated with social media companies to develop a process for “misinformation” and “disinformation” to be tracked. This revelation came after the DHS disbanded its Disinformation Governance Board in May following criticism from Republicans over potential censorship.
In September, Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana released documents showing the DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services emailed Facebook and Twitter employees to flag alleged misinformation examples and provide employees talking points to combat false narratives. The documents were obtained as part of a May lawsuit against the Biden administration over alleged censorship.
Soros is no stranger to the ramped-up Democratic-led fight against “disinformation.”
Along with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Soros bankrolled a corporation called Good Information Inc. to combat disinformation, Axios reported in October 2021. Good Information has acquired the Courier Newsroom, a left-wing media operation boosting Democratic candidates as local news in dozens of states.
“Billionaires like George Soros should not be allowed to manipulate local elections, especially when the result puts American lives at risk,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner.
OSF did not respond to a request for comment.
* Article from: The Washington Examiner