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The Open Society Foundations (OSF), an international philanthropic and charitable organization, reacted to an explosive report that Facebook's top management, including chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, the head of the management, Mark Zuckerberg, and senior lobbyist Joel Kaplan, had been involved in recruiting a Republican opposition study. The company named Definers Public Affairs to counter the growing list of corporate critics , including sharing conspiracy theories about the founder of OSF, the US-Hungarian investor and the Holocaust survivor, George Soros.
Spoilers: They are not happy.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that, while critics were leading a campaign accusing Facebook's aggressive international expansion efforts, Facebook ignored numerous incidents in which it was "exploited to disrupt elections, spread propaganda viral and inspire murderous hate campaigns around the world. " The company has sought to discredit these critics by using a variety of dirty tricks. One of these was the contract of Definers, who led a campaign to "designate Mr. Soros as the unrecognized force." behind what appeared to be a huge anti-Facebook movement.
Many of the groups affiliated with Freedom from Facebook, which led the effort to control the social media giant, had received OSF payments – a tenuous link to be accurately described as another theory of the right-wing conspiracy to about Soros.
Soros, frequently vilified by almost the entire conservative movement and almost invariably targeting anti-Semitic propaganda for his philanthropic initiatives, sent a bomb to his home in October. In a letter to Sandberg, CC in Zuckerberg, as well as Silicon Valley figures and congressmen, OSF President Patrick Gaspard made a direct link between the so-called "smear campaign" and the Attempted attack. He added that society's behavior undermines "the very values that underlie our democracy".
"As you know, there is a concerted right-wing effort around the world to demonize Mr. Soros and his foundations, which I lead – effort that has contributed to the death threats and the delivery of a home-made bomb. at Mr. Soros's home. , Writes Gaspard. "You are probably also aware that much of this hateful and obviously false and anti-Semitic information is broadcast via Facebook."
"The idea that your company, under your leadership, has actively engaged in the same behavior to try to discredit the people who exercise their rights in the First Amendment to protest against the role played by Facebook in spreading a despicable propaganda I'm really surprised, "continued Gaspard. "It's disappointing to see that you have not monitored hatred and misinformation on the Facebook platform. Learning now that you are active in promoting these distortions is beyond anything. "
Gaspard added that Facebook had chosen Soros as a "deliberate strategy to divert its attention" from its own scandals, writing: "It is reprehensible, and an attack on the core values that Open Society seeks to advance. Basically, it's not about George Soros or foundations, your methods threaten the very values that underlie our democracy. "
Gaspard asked for a meeting with Sandberg to discuss the problem directly and what Facebook intends to do in response. But it is clear that after years of scandals related to the protection of privacy, accusations of complicity in propaganda and genocide, and amoral advertising tactics, the situation on Facebook is deteriorating further.
Other revelations in the Times' brief included accusations that Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer was given a large staffing of Facebook staff and whose daughter was working for the company, in order to secretly pressure on Senator Mark Warner to mitigate his criticisms on Facebook he was supposed to work with the company and not against her. The Times also wrote that Facebook supported the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which defenders of sex workers and many tech companies opposed, in part to win the favor of senators on both sides of the world. alley that had criticized it in the past.
Finally, the newspaper reported that Definers operated a subsidiary called NTK Network, which published "dozens of articles" criticizing Facebook and Apple, and that the content of NTK was frequently picked up by popular conservative media, including Breitbart. While Facebook spoke publicly of a big game about "false news", his PR partner produced it.
Open Society Foundations did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, and we will update this post if we have any new ones.
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