Billionaire financier George Soros stepped up his campaign Tuesday to thwart what he says is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to help President Donald Trump win reelection in 2020.
Zuckerberg and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg are pushing for governmental regulation to distract from their supposed working relationship with the U.S. president, Soros wrote in a letter to the editor at the Financial Times.
“Mr Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get reelected,” Soros wrote in the editorial before noting what he says to be Facebook’s disingenuous push for regulations on the tech industry.
He added: “I repeat my proposal, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of Facebook. (It goes without saying that I support government regulation of social media platforms.)”
Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, U.S., October 23, 2019. REUTERS/Erin Scott
Soros’s note came less than a month after he told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that Facebook allows misinformation to run rampant on its platform. He did not provide evidence supporting his theory — Soros is not the only one to make such a claim.
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made a similar claim in October 2019, telling her Twitter followers that Trump and Facebook are brainstorming ways to thwart the will of the people. Warren is running for president in 2020 and is notching an anti-big tech platform.
Warren was referring to reports showing that Trump and Zuckerberg met Sept. 20, 2019, at the Oval Office. The president meanwhile continually argues that Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley giants are discriminating against conservatives online.
Warren and Soros are critical of Facebook’s decision in October 2019 to keep political advertisements on the platform. (RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg Leans On Free Speech While Defending Facebook’s Ad Policies)
Zuckerberg defended the ad policy, which largely exempts politicians from Facebook’s fact checkers, during an interview with The Washington Post in October 2019, telling reporters that Americans probably don’t want a company being the arbiter of what is fact and what is lie.
“People worry, and I worry deeply, too, about an erosion of truth,” he said ahead of a speech at Georgetown University, notching out a free speech defense. “I don’t think people want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true.”
Facebook dismissed Soros’s complaint.
“While we respect Mr. Soros’ right to voice his opinion, he’s wrong,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement. “The notion that we are aligned with any one political figure or party runs counter to our values and the facts.”
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