The left erupted in anger when billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter last year and restored freedom of speech to its proper position on the wildly popular social media platform. For this righteous action, an advertiser boycott was launched to punish Musk for his audacity.
No longer did the left control discourse through content moderation and shadowy algorithms, and this had to be punished. Now it is revealed who was pouring funds into the charge against Twitter.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that left-wing billionaire and Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar sank millions into organizations targeting Musk. Not only did the supporter of the Intercept and ProPublica give $509,500 to Accountable Tech, $2 million went to six other groups aimed at Twitter.
The Free Beacon said the groups organized campaigns that included letters and op-eds criticizing Musk as “uniquely ill-suited” for the position.
NEW: Left-wing billionaire and media donor Pierre Omidyar is bankrolling the dark-money group leading a corporate boycott campaign against Twitter owner @elonmusk.
Via @alanagoodman https://t.co/q3VUAEo4MX
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) February 21, 2023
The concerted effort repeatedly warned that the virtual town square would now be transformed into a “free-for-all of hate and harassment.”
The revelations came from an updated list of grants revealed by Omidyar’s foundation. This news follows months of Accountable Tech artfully dodging questions over its donors, and Musk openly wondered who funded the personal attacks.
Accountable Tech apparently has no physical location. The group called itself a “small nonprofit taking on Big Tech companies.” It is a registered trademark of the North Fund, a left-wing nonprofit group that reportedly works out of a shell office in Washington, D.C.
Interestingly, there is a longtime connection between the two billionaires. It was 2002 when the Ebay founder bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, thus propelling Musk’s meteoric rise to recently being the wealthiest person in the world.
That was then, however. The two are now on opposite ends of the spectrum, as Musk is a conservative favorite and despised by the leftist establishment. Meanwhile, Omidyar poured staggering amounts of funding into dark-money liberal groups and apparently targeted Musk for a boycott.
These groups organized communications with Twitter advertisers last year warning that the purchase would “toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety.”
Other letters from a range of left-wing activists went out to major corporate Twitter sponsors calling for them to cease advertising on the platform.
Contrary to the shrill pronouncements from the left, Twitter has not slid down into a debased mess of misinformation and hate speech. But liberals oppose any platform they do not exercise complete control over, so look for Musk’s company to continue to be targeted by deep-pocketed radicals.
