Soros-Tied Facebook Censorship Board Considers Suppressing Anti-Immigration Speech

A few years after Facebook (now Meta) launched a censorship board to decide which posts get blocked an update on the panel, which is currently inviting public opinion on whether to suppress anti-immigration speech, is in order. The original board—as well as new members—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). This is important because the oversight board, as it is officially known, determines which posts get blocked from the world’s most popular social networking website which has an estimated 3 billion users.

In a recent example, the Meta censorship board is considering whether ant-immigration posts fall under its hate speech policy which removes what the tech giant describes as direct attacks against people on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity, national origin and religious affiliation. Refugees, migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers are protected against “the most severe attacks,” according to the oversight board, though “commentary and criticism of immigration policies” are reportedly allowed. Now the panel wants public comments involving how Meta should distinguish commentary and criticism of immigration policies from direct attacks on people based on protected characteristics, especially during elections. Board members will deliberate the case over the next few weeks, according to a statement posted on the Meta oversight website.

Judicial Watch has gathered some important background on the characters who will ultimately issue the ruling. For starters the group of 22 is overwhelmingly leftist and likely to restrict conservative views. Nearly half of the members have ties to Soros, the wealthy philanthropist who dedicates huge sums to spreading a radical left agenda that includes targeting conservative politicians, erasing national borders and identities, financing civil unrest and orchestrating refugee crises for political gain. Some on the oversight board have made political contributions to top Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren and others have publicly expressed their disdain for former President Donald Trump. Among the panel’s 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.

Many on the 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 has received at least $750,000 from OSF. 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 and understanding political Islam. Afia Asantewaa Sariyev, a human rights attorney, is the program manager at Soros’ Open Society Initiative for West Africa. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, an Indian lawyer and civil society activist, runs a 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 pocketed $1.4 million from OSF.

The list of Meta judges connected to Soros and the organized left continues. Julie Owono is the executive director of a Paris-based nonprofit that advocates for privacy and freedom of expression online. The group is part 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 based in Pakistan that has received $114,000 in grants from OSF. Civil rights activist Tawakkol Karman sits on the advisory board of Transparency International, which gets significant OSF funding. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s former prime minister, is on the board of the European Council of Foreign Relations, which has received millions from OSF. 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. Catalina Botero-Marino is the dean of a Colombian law school called Universidad de Los Andes that got over $1.3 million from OSF. Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at New York University, serves on the board of directors of the Brennan Center for Justice, which took in hundreds of thousands of dollars from OSF in 2021. Suzanne Nossel, an Obama administration official, is on the advisory board of the leftwing think tank Foreign Policy for America, which has received over $1.5 million from Soros in the last few years. Khaled Mansour, an Egyptian academic, is a director at the nonprofit Crisis Action, which has accepted $2.4 million from OSF since 2017.