Believe it or not, as much as I might be online to go about my daily life, there isn’t much I do in the way of social media.
I actually, believe it or not, belong to an email list of friends and family that started more than twenty years ago. These are all people that if I needed to I could call them at a moment’s notice.
There’s something a little too quick and bland about social media interactions, these people you call friends amount to little more than massive amounts of small talk. Any pictures that get shared, we don’t have to worry about them ever getting deleted on my end.
Also, I don’t have to worry about losing access to my pictures and communciation with family because I said something one of the bought off censors doesn’t like.
Facebook claims its new oversight board, which has the authority to allow or remove content from the platform, is diverse in thought and opinion, but an investigation has determined that 18 out of the 20 members of the board have ties to liberal billionaire George Soros or groups he supports.
A recent New York Times op-ed from the oversight board claimed, “The board members come from different professional, cultural and religious backgrounds and have various political viewpoints.”
“Some of us have been publicly critical of Facebook; some of us haven’t,” the authors of the op-ed wrote, adding that “Facebook committed to creating an independent oversight body that will review Facebook’s decisions about what content to take down or leave up. Over the past 18 months, more than 2,000 experts and other relevant parties from 88 countries have contributed feedback that has shaped the development of this oversight board, which will have 20 members (ultimately growing to 40) and is scheduled to become operational this year.”
Other news articles have played up the diversity and global reach of the board, but the revelation that 90 percent of its members have ties to Soros or his organizations appears to bolster complaints from conservatives that they are being censored by Big Tech.
As an example, the RealClearInvestigations report notes that Evelyn Aswad, a U.S. law professor, is a recipient of a grant from a Knight Foundation that has partnered with Open Society Foundations. Furthermore, Aswad once said that corporations should align their “speech codes with international human rights law” and be guided by “international law on freedom of expression.”
One of the four co-chairs of the board, Columbia University law school professor Jamal Greene, used to be an aide to Senator Kamala Harris. Both Columbia University and Harris have financial ties to the Soros family. On his Twitter, Greene also posted several anti-Trump tweets.
Another co-chair, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, is the former socialist Prime Minister of Denmark, and is a trustee at the International Crisis Group funded by the Open Society Foundation. Moreover, both Soros and his son Alexander are members of the International Crisis Group board.