Bill Gates paid millions to derail Elon Musk’s plans – media — Analysis

According to Breitbart data provided by Foundation for Freedom Online, Elon Musk’s fellow billionaire Bill Gates has spent hundreds of millions in 11 of 26 organizations supporting an attempt to stop him from taking control of social media platform Twitter.

Among the 11 Gates-backed organizations reportedly spearheading the effort to sandbag Musk’s Twitter acquisition by pressuring advertisers to boycott the platform is the New Venture Fund, a ‘dark money’ organization that in 2020 received the largest one-year commitment the Foundation has made in over five years. The group funds the Center for Media Justice, the Media Democracy Fund, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Accountable Tech, all of which signed the open letter backing the advertiser boycott, and has received some 102 separate cash grants from Gates’ foundation since 2008, amounting to $457 million in all, according to the Foundation’s own financial disclosures. The New Venture Fund also has subsidiaries such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Tides Foundation funds five more signatories. The Gates Foundation heavily backs Indivisible, Free Press and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Media Matters and Black Lives Matter Global Network are all funded by the Gates-backed Community Partners. Empowering Pacific Islands Community is funded by Gates-backed NEO Philanthropy.

Gates and Musk have publicly feuded recently, with the Microsoft founder revealing he still held a $500 million short position against Musk’s electric car company Tesla even as Gates called on Musk to get involved in his climate philanthropy. The SpaceX founder characteristically took to Twitter to air his grievances, likening a photo of Gates to the “pregnant man” emoji and calling the images a “boner killer.”

The software tycoon turned self-styled pandemic expert has also been a major proponent of censorship during the Covid-19 epidemic, insisting that allowing vaccine skeptics to freely exchange their ideas on social media platforms should be prohibited, and Musk’s talk of rolling back some of Twitter’s more stringent censorship policies have rubbed him the wrong way.

Last month, 26 organisations signed an open letter demanding that advertisers boycott Twitter in case Musk attempts to relax the stringent speech restrictions it has imposed over the years. “Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized,” it claimed. Advertisers who continued to work with the platform risked “Association with an organization that promotes hate, extremism and health misinformation.,” the letter stated. 

Musk subsequently tweeted a call to “investigate” who was funding the boycott demand, declaring “The best disinfectant is sunlight.” Many of the groups, such as Media Matters, the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and Indivisible Northern Nevada, are openly associated with the US Democratic Party, while others are linked to liberal causes like abortion rights and LGBT advocacy, and ubiquitous pro-Democrat financial figures like currency speculator George Soros loom large behind the signatory list. 

While the Tesla CEO has described himself as a “Free speech absoluteist” and initially pledged to return Twitter to its halcyon days as the “The free speech wing is part of the party.,” he more recently qualified those statements by reassuring government regulators that he would respect the strict speech codes muzzling outspoken social media users in Europe and the US.

Musk’s $44 billion offer to purchase Twitter was accepted by the board of directors earlier this month, but the acquisition has been delayed as the billionaire has called for Twitter to prove that “Spam/fake accounts make up less than 5%.”

Last month, the platform claimed that this claim was made in its quarterly financial report. It did so based upon a review of samples accounts. However, the company acknowledged that it had not independently verified the calculations and that they could have been higher. While the Musk purchase is pending, several high-ranking Twitter executive have been forced out of their jobs or left the company. A hiring freeze was also in place.