Billionaire oligarch and globalist extraordinaire George Soros said that nothing is preventing Facebook from disseminating disinformation.
He even argued that the company may be conspiring with President Donald Trump to get him re-elected.
“I think there is a kind of informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook,” Soros, said on Thursday, January 23, 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Facebook will work together to re-elect Trump, and Trump will work to protect Facebook so that this situation cannot be changed and it makes me very concerned about the outcome for 2020.”
Soros did not back up his claim with any evidence. “This is just plain wrong,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in response to Soros’ unfounded conspiracy claims.
Soros has frequently used his annual Davos speech as a platform to attack the social media titan. Back in 2018, he compared Facebook to a gambling company that gets its users addicted. The billionaire globalist also emphasized the need to regulate technology firms back in 2019.
Facebook has been placed under the microscope for the Russian misinformation campaign that allegedly ran undetected on the social network in the months leading up to the 2016 election.
Since then, the company has worked to improve its technology for removing what it considers “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, which are malicious efforts by foreign governments to manipulate public opinion. However, critics counter that Trump is helped by Facebook because he has the ability to generate public outrage, which is only amplified by social media’s overall reach.
Facebook mulled over taking down political ads containing lies. However, the company decided at the beginning of this year to not proceed with this course of action. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg appealed to first amendment values and declared that no corporation should determine what political messages are true or false.
This announcement allayed the fears of Republicans, who have grilled the company about a perceived anti-conservative bias.
“Facebook basically has only one guiding principle: maximize your profits irrespective of what harm it may do to the world,” Soros said on Thursday.
In the aftermath of Soros’s 2018 Davos speech, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg asked her staff to research if Soros had a financial interest in criticizing the company. Specifically, she inquired about Soros’ holdings or trading activity. The company also hired the services of an opposition research firm to see if Soros financially backed anti-Facebook groups. The New York Times previously ran a report covering the fallout from Sandberg’s decision.