Soros flooded Big Tech censorship pressure group with millions during midterm elections

Democratic megadonor George Soros poured millions of dollars into a foreign group pressuring social media companies to fight “disinformation” and “misinformation” online in 2022, a midterm election year, records show.

Global Witness is investigating the likes of Google, X, Facebook, and TikTok for not removing purportedly “outright false” and “misleading” content while calling on governments to legislate against “hate speech,” according to documents on its website. That same British charity, which has an affiliated research arm in Palo Alto, California, received $2.65 million last year from Foundation to Promote Open Society and Alliance for Open Society International, two organizations in the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations dark money grantmaking network, newly released financial disclosures reveal.

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The cash transfers, which became public due to the November deadline for nonprofit groups to file their tax forms, underscore how Soros and other left-wing billionaires are opening their wallets to support “disinformation” trackers under fire from Republicans in Congress, including from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), for their ties to what Republicans call the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” Lawmakers have particularly ramped up efforts to stop the United States government from bankrolling apparent censors this year following the release of the Washington Examiner’s “Disinformation Inc.” series and the “Twitter Files,” sets of documents X owner Elon Musk provided to liberal journalists on the operations of the company, formerly Twitter, under ex-CEO Jack Dorsey.

“Only the sickest narcissist would direct his wealth to control, silence, and manipulate people who have far smaller bank accounts,” said Dan Schneider, vice president for the Media Research Center’s Free Speech Alliance group, whose coalition members in late November called on Congress in a letter to pass a National Defense Authorization Act provision that would prohibit the Pentagon from funding NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index — two state-funded organizations accused of censoring disfavored speech.

The Washington Examiner reported in early 2023 that GDI covertly blacklists conservative media outlets and has received funds from the State Department, leading to congressional investigations and corporations cutting ties with GDI.

“It is one thing to use your financial resources to promote whatever cause you believe in,” Schneider added. “It is an entirely different thing to use your money to rob others of their rights.”

Global Witness has taken aim at social media companies for firing “teams responsible for election safety,” joining a “Global Coalition for Tech Justice” with 149 groups this year “to demand that large social media companies invest in safeguarding the 2024 elections, especially for the overlooked global majority,” according to its website. The nonprofit group maintains a “digital threats” tab on its website, which slams social media platforms for allowing “xenophobic hate speech in South Africa” and “online hate speech directed at LGBTQI+ communities in Europe.”

The “digital threats” tab also calls out Facebook for allowing “disinformation” to flourish before Brazil’s 2022 elections, linking to an article on a Global Witness investigation published in Al Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar, one of the Middle East countries funding Hamas, whose Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel has since killed more than 1,200 people.

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Global Witness notably partnered in October 2022 with New York University’s Cybersecurity for Democracy initiative for an “election disinformation” study that put TikTok on blast for allegedly approving “90 percent of ads featuring misleading and false election disinformation” in connection to the 2022 midterm elections. Jon Lloyd, a senior adviser to Global Witness, said at the time, “Our democracy rests on their willingness to act,” referring to social media companies removing certain content.

In a March article titled, “The climate divide: How Facebook’s algorithm amplifies climate disinformation,” Global Witness slammed the “QAnon conspiracy” for its role in the “January 6th Capitol insurrection, demonstrating the ability of online narratives to become real-world violence.” The article asked governments 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.”

“It comes as no surprise that George Soros-backed groups are pumping millions of dollars into a liberal nonprofit seeking to censor the American people,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), a House Appropriations Committee member, told the Washington Examiner. “Big Tech’s control over online speech remains one of the most egregious forms of election interference, one that continuously silences conservative voices in the name of combating ‘disinformation.'”

“In order to protect election integrity and preserve Americans’ constitutional right to free speech, Congress must investigate the flow of funds influencing these dangerous censorship efforts,” Clyde said.

Global Witness previously received more than $17.8 million from the OSF network between 2016 and 2020, records show. Dominic Kavakeb, a spokeswoman for Global Witness, declined to comment on the 2022 grants.

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Kavakeb pointed the Washington Examiner to descriptions on OSF’s website saying that $250,000 from Alliance for Open Society International to Global Witness was “to promote corporate and public accountability in the fossil fuel industry,” while $2.4 million from Foundation to Promote Open Society was “to provide general support.”

Open Society Foundations spokesman Jonathan Kaplan did not return a request for comment.