The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into 11 out of 26 organizations to prevent Elon Musk from taking over "Twitter," according to Short's data with Breitbart by Freedom Online.
Of the 11 organizations supported by Gates, reports led efforts to acquire Musk on Twitter by lobbying advertisers to boycott the platform, the New Venture Fund, a "dark money" organization that in 2020 received the largest one-year commitment by the Foundation in more than five years.
- The group is funded by the Media Justice Centre
- the Democracy Media Fund
- the National Hispanic Media Coalition and Accounting Technology
all of which have signed the open letter in support of Al-Mawadir province and have received some 102 separate cash grants from Gates since 2008 totalling $457 million, according to the private financial institution's disclosures. The group of other signatories, such as Sixteen Thirty Fund, included subsidiaries of the New Venture Fund.
The Tides Foundation, another dark financial group heavily supported by Gates funds, funds five other locations: Free Press, Indivisible, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Media Matters and Black Lives Matter Global Network, while
- Gates and Musk have recently publicly feuded
- with the Microsoft founder revealing that he still retains a short $500 million status against Musk's Tesla Electric Vehicles
- even as he invited Gates Musk to participate in his climate charity.
The founder of SpaceX made a distinctive move to Twitter to express his grievances, likening Gates' image to "pregnant man" and describing the images as "Bonner's killer."
The software mogul, who became an expert on the pandemic, has been a key proponent of censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic, insisting that vaccine skeptics should be banned from freely sharing their ideas on social media platforms.
- The 26 organizations signed an open letter last month calling on advertisers to boycott Twitter
- should Musk make any efforts to ease the platform's strict speech controls in the past few years.
- "Musk's takeover of Twitter will increase the toxicity of our information system and pose a direct threat to public safety
- especially among the most vulnerable and already marginalized."
The letter stated that advertisers who continued to work with the platform risked "being associated with a platform that amplifies hatred, extremism
health misinformation and conspiracy theorists."
The board approved Musk's $44 billion offer to buy Twitter earlier this month, but the acquisition was postponed as the billionaire called on Twitter to prove that "fake accounts already account for less than 5% of users.
The Platform made this claim last month in a quarterly financial report based on a sample audit, but acknowledged that the account had not been independently verified and that real figures could be higher.
Bill Gates warns Elon Musk!
Bill Gates is preparing for a potential problem when fellow billionaire Elon Musk completes his Twitter takeover, saying that a free speech advocate could make misinformation more widespread.
- "It can actually make it worse
- " Gates said of Musk on Wednesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
- Musk had an "amazing" track record of building successful businesses at Tesla and SpaceX by being bolder than competitors.
Gates said:
"I doubt this will happen this time, but we must have an open mind and not underestimate Elon.
What is his goal?
Where he talks about openness, how does he feel about something that says vaccines kill people or that Bill Gates is tracking people?
Is this one of the things he thinks should be published?, It is therefore still not entirely clear what he will do. "
Gates argued that governments and social media companies had failed to stop false comments about the COVID-19 pandemic. He said
When you don't have trusted leaders talking about vaccines, it's very difficult for platforms to work against it. So I think we have a leadership problem, we have a statute problem. "
- Musk reached a deal with Twitter last week to buy the company for $44 billion. He vowed to return freedom of expression to the platform
- raising concerns that Twitter would no longer censor comments described as "misinformation."
- However, determining whether speech is false is often in the eye of the beholder. For example
- some controlled comments early in the epidemic -- such as the theory that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory -- became prevalent in subsequent months.
Musk claimed that "freedom of expression is the cornerstone of an effective democracy."
The Wall Street Journal interview came a day after Gates told NBC News that perhaps there should be laws that "strike a better balance between freedom of expression versus conspiracy theories that confuse people."
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