There has been a massive push to boycott Twitter after Elon Musk bought the platform and promised to turn it into a “free speech” haven.
Twenty-six NGOs and advocacy groups signed a letter expressing concern over new directions for the platform. See how Musk responded below.
The letter states: “Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized.”
It warns that advertising on Twitter could alienate the brands and associate them with “hate, extremism, health misinformation, and conspiracy theorists.”
The letter was sent on letterhead showing the logos of Accountable Tech, Media Matters for America and Ultraviolet.
‘Your ad dollars can either fund Musk’s vanity project or hold him to account. We call on you to demand Musk uphold these basic standards of community trust and safety, and to pull your advertising spending from Twitter if they are not.’
Musk quickly responded on Twitter with a question about who funded them. According to Daily Mail, there’s an assortment of “dark money groups” that include George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, Former Clinton and Obama administration staffers, wealthy progressive donors, labor unions and European governments.
Accountable Tech is run by Nicole Gill, founder of the 2017 Tax March, and Jesse Lehrich, a former foreign policy spokesperson to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Their mission statement is: “Social media giants are eroding our consensus reality and pushing democracy to the brink,’ they state on their website. Accountable Tech is fighting back.”
Media Matters For America is also behind the push and is chaired by David Brock, a former conservative journalist who flipped to become the Democrats “attack dog,” as described by Politico.
Media Matters for America says it is “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
It was originally funded by donations from progressive mega-donors.
Ultraviolet was formed in 2012 and describes itself on it’s website as “a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.”
The group was founded by Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas and is backed by unions such as the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
There were several European based groups such as Fair Vote UK based in Britain, the Center for Countering Digital Hate in the UK, and Access Now, which is funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the governments of Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.
