Ahead of the election, Republican lawmakers are sounding alarm bells about Texas billionaire John Arnold, who was appointed to Meta’s board earlier this year — warning that he undermining efforts To keep expression free and open on Facebook ahead of the presidential election.
Arnold, who is worth an estimated $2.9 billion, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on left-wing causes, including bail reform in New York state and organizations linked to George Soros that “fund the welfare of Americans,” according to Forbes.Misinformation,
“John Arnold is a far-left radical who funded pro-criminal projects in Indiana and pro-censorship organizations across the country. His board appointment should make every patriotic American concerned about Big Tech's interference in the 2024 presidential election, just as they did in the last one,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) told the Post.
,“Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that he wants to promote free speech and not manipulate the upcoming election,” committee member Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) told The Post about Meta's CEO. “I want to believe it, but it's hard to believe when John Arnold, a funder of millions to pro-censorship groups, sits on Meta's board. Americans deserve to speak freely without the left-wing dark money network that fuels the censorship industrial complex and works against their right to free expression.”
In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in August, Zuckerberg said he would speak out against censorship after he acknowledged Facebook downplayed The Post's story about Hunter Biden's laptop ahead of the 2020 election, and that had to bow to pressure from the Biden administration To censor COVID-related content.
Zuckerberg wrote that “I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret not being more vocal about it.”
But another member of the committee, Representative Greg Steube (R-Florida), believes Arnold's role at Meta signals that Zuckerberg isn't ready to move away from censorship entirely.
“Meta is notorious for censoring conservative speech. Only after Zuckerberg was caught interfering in the election by censoring [Post’s] In the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, he promised to improve Meta’s “content moderation processes,” Steube told the Post.
“It seems that John Arnold, who has spent millions on censorship efforts, should be the last person on Meta's board, if Zuckerberg had any seriousness about his pledge.”
A spokesperson for Arnold told The Post: “John strongly believes that the bedrock principles of the First Amendment must be protected at all costs, which is why he has supported the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) since 2013, and it’s why he’s now supporting the University of Texas at Austin, an institution committed to free speech on campus.”
Asked about Arnold's role on Meta's board, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) criticized the company's past efforts to suppress speech — “Is there anything more Orwellian than that?” — and said that “the board [is] Full of left-wing academics making decisions on freedom of expression issues.”
While Meta’s board has right-wing members, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former George W. Bush administration official Robert M. Kimmitt, lawmakers say Arnold is far more political than anyone else on the board — especially since conservative firebrand Peter Thiel leaves in 2022.
Arnold, 50, began his career as an energy trader at Enron before starting the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, which earned him the title of America's youngest billionaire in 2007. He shut the fund in 2012 and began donating to causes focused on public policy issues through his philanthropic organization Arnold Ventures.
He gave $1.5 million to the Social Science Research Council, which operates MediaWell, a firm that “produces research and news on digital misinformation and disinformation,” between 2018 and 2022, according to the 990 filing.
The research topics are as follows: Regulating “extremist speech” On smaller platforms like Parler “Fighting an indestructible monsterFrom “story of journalistic legitimacy during the Trump era” to criticism covid lab-leak called the theory “racist” and a “conspiracy theory”.
The organisation also said that advocated for Similar to policies implemented in the European Union that crack down on “deep extremist language.”
In 2020, Arnold gave $500,000 to Global Witness, an NGO started by left-wing billionaire George Soros. Supported since 2002While Global Witness emphasizes its commitment to defending human rights, much of its recent research has been focused on “election misinformation”.
A recent Global Witness investigation revealed that X “to uplift[s] Right-wing views” And tech companies are failing to do so properly Put a stop to climate misinformation,
Arnold gave $13.5 million to the New Venture Fund from 2016 to 2020. According to the nonprofit Capital ResearchThe fund lobbied for increased government oversight of speech, including net neutrality. And a 2022 Washington Examiner report shows that Arnold gave nearly $10 million more to “groups associated with the movement to combat so-called disinformation and misinformation” between 2019 and 2021.
Over the past five years, he has also given more than $45 million to organizations striving for bail reform in New York. As per Fox News report – This amount exceeds the $40 million given by Soros for these efforts.
Arnold has previously worked with Facebook. Funding the 2018 Partnership He has attempted to study how social media is affecting elections, but other than that he doesn’t have much experience with social media.
Last month, he admitted in a statement that Bloomberg Interview His appointment to Meta’s board of directors in February was unexpected: “I’m not a technical person, which made the invitation even more surprising.
“I think they were looking for someone who had some expertise in the energy space… the amount of infrastructure needed to run a data center for AI is enormous,” Arnold said.
He said his philanthropic work fighting misinformation could be a boon for the company. “My background in public policy is an asset to them.”
“John Arnold brings a wealth of experience to Meta's board of directors, particularly in the energy and infrastructure sectors, which are critical areas of expertise as Meta builds the next generation of computing,” Meta said in a statement.
