A Hillary Clinton-linked dark money group targeted Twitter advertisers as Elon Musk acquired the platform, according to reports.
Accountable Tech wrote to top Twitter advertisers demanding “non-negotiable” business requirements, claiming Musk’s takeover would “toxify” the platform and threaten public safety.
“Twitter has outsized influence in shaping both public discourse and industry-wide platform governance standards,” the letter states.
“While the company is hardly a poster child for healthy social media, it has taken welcome steps in recent years to mitigate systemic risks, ratcheting up pressure on the likes of Facebook and YouTube to follow suit,” it added.
“Musk intends to steamroll those safeguards and provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation, hate, and harassment,” it continues.
“Under the guise of ‘free speech,’ his vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy,” the letter adds.
As Fox News reported:
The group demands that advertisers commit to keeping accounts of politicians and public figures removed for “egregious violations” off the platform, ensuring “algorithmic accountability” and continuing their “commitment to research transparency and researcher access” – or drop their business.
The letter was signed by 25 other liberal groups, including Media Matters and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. But it is not known what companies received Accountable Tech’s letter.
The letter is the second sent to Twitter’s advertisers from liberal activists.
Earlier this month, a slew of left-wing groups co-signed a letter calling on advertisers to embrace content moderation or boycott the platform.
Accountable Tech is a fiscally sponsored project of the North Fund, a nonprofit incubator closely tied to a billion-dollar dark money network managed by the Arabella Advisors consulting firm, Washington D.C., according to business records.
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Hillary Clinton
Unsurprisingly, the left-wing group is closely linked to Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together nonprofit, which was created following her 2016 loss to Donald Trump.
According to a press release, Accountable Tech joined Onward Together as an official partner in December 2020.
“It’s a tremendous honor to join the Onward Together family, and to have the opportunity to work alongside such a dynamic coalition of leaders in the fight for a more just future,” Accountable Tech co-founder Jesse Lehrich said in a statement at the time.
“Our broken information ecosystem poses urgent and intersectional threats,” Lehrich continued. “Women and communities of color are disproportionately harmed by those threats, from online harassment and voter suppression to disinformation and extremism. Working closely with a diverse network of progressive partners is not just important to Accountable Tech – it is essential to guiding our mission.”
Lehrich also served as Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign official spokesperson.
Clinton said she’d work alongside Accountable Tech to provide grants, advice, and other support.
“It’s perfect Accountable Tech leads the posse of groups attacking Elon Musk and Twitter,” Capital Research Center president Scott Walter told Fox Business. “These groups are cancel culture incarnate, mixing left-wing advocacy with Democratic Party politics.”
“Accountable Tech spawned from the heart of the Left—the multibillion-dollar Arabella Advisors empire of “dark money,” and then was passed to Hillary Clinton’s empire at Onward Together.”
“Americans of all political stripes should fear for their freedom if these front groups and their billionaire backers can bully Twitter,” Walter added.
