Most of Facebook Censorship Board Has Ties to Leftwing Billionaire George Soros

[Incogbenzo77]

Most of Facebook Censorship Board 
Has Ties to Leftwing 
Billionaire George Soros




MAY 29, 2020|JUDICIAL WATCH


The recently appointed Facebook oversight board that will 
decide which posts get blocked from the world’s most popular 
social networking website is stacked with leftists, including a 
close friend of leftwing billionaire George Soros who served 
on the board of directors of his Open Society Foundations (OSF). 
Judicial Watch conducted a deep dive into the new panel that 
will make content rulings for the technology company that was 
slammed last year with a $5 billion fine for privacy violations. 
The information uncovered by Judicial Watch shows that the 
group of 20 is overwhelmingly leftist and likely to restrict 
conservative views. More than half of the members have ties 
to Soros, the philanthropist who dedicates huge sums to 
spreading a radical left agenda that includes targeting 
conservative politicians. Other Facebook oversight board 
members have publicly expressed their disdain for 
President Donald Trump or made political contributions to 
top Democrats such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and 
Elizabeth Warren. As one New York newspaper editorial 
determined this month, the new Facebook board is 
a “recipe for left-wing censorship.”

Among the standouts is András Sajó, the founding Dean of 
Legal Studies at Soros’ Central European University. Sajó 
was a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) 
for nearly a decade. He also served on the board of directors 
of OSF’s Justice Initiative. Sajó was one of the ECHR judges 
in an Italian case (Latusi v. Italy) that ruled unanimously that 
the display of a crucifix in public schools in Italy violates the 
European Convention on Human Rights. The decision was 
subsequently overturned. Sajó’s deep ties to Soros are also 
concerning. Through his OSF Soros funds a multitude of projects 
worldwide aimed at spreading a leftist agenda by, among other 
things, destabilizing legitimate governments, erasing national 
borders and identities, financing civil unrest and orchestrating 
refugee crises for political gain.  Incredibly, there is a financial 
and staffing nexus between the U.S. government and Soros’ OSF. 
Read about it in a Judicial Watch [b]special report[/b] documenting 
how Soros advances his leftist agenda at U.S. taxpayer expense.

At least 10 other members of the Facebook oversight board are 
connected to leftist groups tied to Soros that have benefitted from 
his generous donations, according to Judicial Watch’s research. 
Alan Rusbridger, a former British newspaper editor and principal 
at Oxford University, serves on the board of directors of the 
Committee to Protect Journalists, which received $750,000 from 
OSF in 2018. Rusbridger also served as a governor at a global 
thinktank, Ditchley Foundation, that co-hosted a conference with 
OSF on change in the Middle East and North Africa as well as 
understanding political Islam. Afia Asantewaa Sariyev, a human 
rights attorney, is the program manager at Soros’ 
Open Society Initiative for West Africa. Her research includes 
critical race feminism and socio-economic rights of the poor. 
Sudhir Krishnaswamy, an Indian lawyer and civil society activist, 
runs a progressive nonprofit called Centre for Law and Policy 
Research that focuses on transgender rights, gender equality 
and public health. The group is a grantee of a justice foundation 
that received $1.4 million from OSF between 2016 and 2018. 
Krishnaswamy’s Centre also received money from a radical 
pro-abortion group, Center for Reproductive Rights, generously 
funded by the OSF.

The list of Facebook judges connected to Soros and the organized 
left continues. Julie Owono is the executive director of a 
Paris-based nonprofit, Internet Sans Frontieres, that advocates 
for privacy and freedom of expression online. In 2018, Internet 
Sans Frontieres became a member of the Global Network Initiative, 
an internet oversight and policy consortium handsomely funded 
by Soros. Nighat Dad is a Pakistani attorney and the founder of 
the Digital Rights Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in 
Pakistan that has received $114,000 in grants from OSF. Dad’s 
group also gets funding from Facebook Ireland. Ronaldo Lemos, 
a Brazilian law professor, served on the board of directors of 
the Mozilla Foundation, which collected $350,000 from OSF in 
2016 and was also a board member at another group, Access Now, 
that also got thousands of dollars from Soros. Tawakkol Karman, 
a journalist and civil rights activist, sits on the advisory board of 
Transparency International, which gets significant funding 
from Soros’ OSF.

Rounding out the Soros-affiliated field on the new Facebook censorship 
board are Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Catalina Botero-Marino and 
Maina Kiai[b]. [/b]Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s former prime minister, 
sits on the board of the European Council of Foreign Relations, 
which took in more $3.6 million from OSF in 2016 and 2017. She 
is also a trustee at the International Crisis Group which has collected 
over $8.2 million from OSF and includes George and Alexander Soros 
on its board. The former Danish prime minister is also a member of 
the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board, which received 
approximately $325,000 from OSF in the last few years and the 
European Advisory Board of the Center for Global Development, 
which got north of half a million dollars from OSF in 2018. Botero-Marino 
is the dean of a Colombian law school called Universidad de Los Andes 
that obtained more than $1.3 million from OSF between 2016 and 2018, 
the records obtained by Judicial Watch show. Botero-Marino also 
sits on the panel of experts at Columbia University’s Global Freedom 
Expression Project, which gets funding from OSF, and she was a 
board member at Article 19, a group that got about $1.7 million 
from OSF between 2016 and 2018. Kiai is the director of the 
Global Alliances and Partnerships at Human Rights Watch, which 
accepted $275,000 from OSF in 2018. He is also a member of 
OSF’s Human Rights Initiative advisory board and was the founding 
executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, which 
got $615,000 from Soros in the last two years.

Others on the Facebook board have slandered President Trump in 
social media posts and donated money to high-profile Democrats. 
Taiwanese communications professor Katherine Chen’s Twitter 
account includes retweets of numerous anti-Trump and pro-Obama 
posts and articles. Nicolas Suzor, a law professor in Australia, 
retweeted a column implicitly comparing Trump to Hitler and 
Columbia University law professor Jamal Greene has made 
campaign contributions to Obama, Hillary Clinton and Warren. 
Pro-Trump impeachment Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, 
who took a cheap shot at President Trump’s teenage son during 
the Brett Kavanaugh impeachment hearings, has also contributed 
money to Obama, Hillary Clinton and Warren. The new board has 
only a few token conservatives such as Stanford law professor 
Michael McConnell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. The 
overwhelming majority of those making Facebook’s “final and binding 
decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed,” 
are leftists. They represent a new model of content moderation 
that will uphold “freedom of expression within the framework of 
international norms of human rights.” Facebook’s economic, 
political or reputational interests will not interfere in the process, the 
company writes in its introduction to the new board. Eventually 
the board, which will begin hearing cases later this year, will double 
in size. “The cases we choose to hear may be contentious, and 
we will not please everyone with our decisions,” Facebook warns.

They represent a new model of content moderation 
that will uphold “freedom of expression within the framework of 
international norms of human rights.” 

I wonder where that will lead?