A radical censorship-obsessed group financed by leftist billionaire George Soros is doubling down on efforts to interfere in the 2024 election by turning the screws on Big Tech to censor speech and by manipulating journalists.
Free Press, fueled with at least $2 million by Soros between 2017 and 2021, announced that it was launching a new Orwellian scheme called “‘Democracy Is … .’” This so-called “new initiative” will deputize journalists through indoctrination by the Soros machine and engage the public on how to censor speech by supposedly “flagging disinformation” on social media platforms. In addition, Free Press pledged that the initiative would “provide other needed resources to influence media and technology platforms to better serve our communities and strengthen our democracy,” the press release boasted. [Emphasis added.]
The new “Democracy Is …” website sensationalized how “In an era of misinformation and manipulation, the role of media and tech matter more than ever,” offering chilling insights into where the Soros empire is zeroing its focus ahead of the November elections.
The coalition is a hodgepodge of leftist and Soros-backed groups. These groups include the “digital brownshirts” at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, whose entire modus operandi is pressuring Big Tech to censor views that don’t comport with leftist narratives on climate change, COVID-19 and other things.
Other coalition members include Soros-backed groups like People for the American Way, UnidosUS, Common Cause, UltraViolet and United We Dream, which received an additional $12,085,000 at least collectively between them and/or their affiliated groups from the billionaire’s empire. Another group, Accountable Tech, became notorious for pressuring advertisers to pull their ads from Twitter (now X) after owner Elon Musk completed his multibillion-dollar acquisition.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider ripped the coalition in a statement. “Free Press’s view of saving Democracy is to take away the rights of half of Americans by silencing its political opponents who express different political points of view,” he rebuked. “Nothing can be more undemocratic than that.”
The new “Democracy Is …” website excoriated Big Tech platforms for scaling back their 1984-like Ministry of Truth apparatus that censored speech like it was going out of style in the 2020 election:
This retreat from content moderation, civil-society oversight and trust-and-safety measures means that tech companies are not prepared to protect users and democracy in 2024. In 2020, election disinformation disproportionately targeted people of color, women and non-English speakers — and this trend continues today.
“Democracy Is …” laid out a litany of “demands” to Big Tech platforms, which are nothing short of disturbing. One demand was for Big Tech platforms to “expand critical moderation and enforcement teams,” which is a euphemism for making sure social media giants like Facebook, TikTok and X act as speech control officers.
But there’s more. Another demand was for Big Tech platforms to actively “Add technical interventions to limit virality,” an outright call for censorship that would target the reach of a post and not openly silencing the speech on the platform. Specifically, the coalition is calling for Big Tech to “Place greater friction to reduce the visibility and easy distribution of election-related content that has been flagged and is awaiting review.” No, you didn’t misread that.
Nora Benavidez, Free Press Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights, openly boasted in the press release about the dystopian premises of the new Soros empire effort, masquerading it as some sort of noble display of heroics:
Democracy Is … was founded on the premise that people power can disrupt institutional failings. We have brought together organizations with core recommendations that both media and tech companies should take to protect users and give people the information they need to participate fully in their communities and our democracy. The time to act is now.
This new push immediately follows just after Free Press bellowed in May how it was leading another 200 member coalition of leftist groups around the world to pressure Big Tech to restrict speech by “reinstating” their so-called “election-integrity policies.” Forty-five members of the 200-member coalition were fueled with over $80 million from Soros between 2016 and 2022, including Free Press.
The Media Research Center and members of its Free Speech Alliance have already publicly warned Big Tech companies in August about not bowing to leftist pressure to censor speech before the 2024 election.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
