OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s name has come up in the left’s ongoing effort to strip Twitter of advertisers after billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform and began restoring previously banned conservative users and loosening speech restrictions.
According to the Fox Business Network, Clinton is linked to a group called Accountable Tech, which “spearheaded a letter to top Twitter advertisers as part of a larger pressure campaign demanding ‘non-negotiable’ requirements for their business, saying that Musk’s takeover will further ‘toxify’ the social media giant and directly threaten public safety.”
The letter states: “Twitter has outsized influence in shaping both public discourse and industry-wide platform governance standards. 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.”
“Musk intends to steamroll those safeguards and provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation, hate, and harassment,” the letter continues. “Under the guise of ‘free speech,’ his vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.”
Fox Business Network added:
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.Â
It’s unclear what companies received Accountable Tech’s letter, which is also signed by 25 other liberal groups, including Media Matters and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.Â
The outlet noted that Accountable Tech is not on its own. Rather, the org is financially sponsored by the North Fund, a nonprofit “incubator” that is part of a billion-dollar “dark money network” that is managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, according to business records.
The leftist group is very closely tied to Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together group, a nonprofit she created after she lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump as a means of providing her a platform of resistance.
Fox Business noted that Accountable Tech joined Onward Together in December 2020 as an official partner, a press release stated.
“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 then.
“Our broken information ecosystem poses urgent and intersectional threats,” Lehrich added. “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.”
He previously served as a spokesperson for Clinton’s 2016 campaign. When the partnership was announced, Clinton stated that she would be working with Accountable Tech to dole out grants, consulting, and other support to get the organization “to the next level.”
“@OnwardTogether will work with both groups to provide grants, advice, and other support as these organizations take their work to the next level. Here’s to building power behind the values we share, and even more wins, in 2021. Can’t wait to get started,” she tweeted.
.@OnwardTogether will work with both groups to provide grants, advice, and other support as these organizations take their work to the next level.
Here’s to building power behind the values we share, and even more wins, in 2021.
Can’t wait to get started.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 18, 2020
“It’s perfect Accountable Tech leads the posse of groups attacking Elon Musk and Twitter,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, 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,” Walter continued.
“Americans of all political stripes should fear for their freedom if these front groups and their billionaire backers can bully Twitter,” he added.
The effort to strip Twitter of advertisers was blasted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who called it “corporate communism.”
“This is Corporate Communism. Corporations using their economic power to force their political agendas. They need to go back to the ‘Customer is King’ mentality, not corporations are king,” she tweeted Sunday in a post that contained an alleged list of advertisers that have already bailed on Twitter.
“@elonmusk opening Twitter for everyone’s speech doesn’t promote one side it opens the town square and levels the playing field. The left can’t win on equal ground in debate. They are the party that promoted tyrannical lockdowns, mandated unnecessary vaccines, drag queen shows in schools, racist CRT curriculums, sexualizing & grooming kids,” she added.
it opens the town square and levels the playing field.
The left can’t win on equal ground in debate.
They are the party that promoted tyrannical lockdowns, mandated unnecessary vaccines, drag queen shows in schools, racist CRT curriculums, sexualizing & grooming kids,
Cont’d
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 27, 2022
