Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Facebook's Opposition Research on Billionaire George Soros

After billionaire George Soros made critical comments about Facebook and Google at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of this year, Facebook pursued research as to why. Soros had accused the tech giants of being menaces who were not protecting society. Facebook confirmed that Soros is a prominent investor in the company and they wondered if he had shorted Facebook stock or what his motivations could be.

Facebook commissioned Definers Public Affairs, a public relations firm, to conduct opposition research and to provide communications consulting about Soros and others, purportedly at the request of now outgoing communications and policy head Elliot Schrage. Such activity is common in political circles, yet the documents produced by the research are not meant to be released to the public or linked to their sponsors. It is not clear what CEO Mark Zuckerberg or COO Sheryl Sandberg knew or when.

BuzzFeed News was the first to publish a portion of the Definers' documents which draw possible ties between Soros and left-wing advocacy groups. The documents list open source research, such as news clippings and blog posts.

Definers had reported that at least four groups associated with the progressive-led Freedom From Facebook campaign had received funding from or were associated with Soros. Freedom From Facebook has since denied those claims. Research from Axios claims that Freedom From Facebook's original funder is philanthropist and former hedge fund executive David Magerman; the campaign allegedly has a six-figure ad budget.

BuzzFeed News published some of Definers' research documents in their December 1, 2018 article “This Document Is Some Of The Research Facebook Commissioned On George Soros.” The above is summarized from their article.

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