Ahead of the election, Republican lawmakers are sounding alarm bells about Texas billionaire John Arnold, who was appointed to Meta’s board earlier this year, warning he could undermine efforts to maintain free speech and openness at Facebook ahead of the presidential election.
Arnold, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes to be about $2.9 billion, has spent tens of millions of dollars funding left-wing causes, including bail reform in New York State and organizations affiliated with George Soros that criticize “misinformation.”
“John Arnold is a far-left radical who funded pro-crime projects in Indiana and pro-censorship organizations across the country. His appointment to the board should make all patriotic Americans nervous about the possibility of Big Tech interfering in the 2024 presidential election, just as they did in the previous cycle,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) told The Post.
““Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that he wanted to promote free speech and not manipulate the upcoming election,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a member of the committee, told The Post of Meta’s CEO. “I’d like to believe it, but it’s implausible that John Arnold, who funded millions of dollars to pro-censorship groups, sits on Meta’s board. Americans deserve to speak freely without the left’s dark money network fueling the censorship industrial complex and working against their right to free speech.”
In an August letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he would push against censorship after acknowledging that Facebook had demoted The Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election, and that it had caved to pressure from the Biden administration to censor Covid-related content.
Zuckerberg wrote: “I think the government pressure was misguided and I regret not being more forthright about it.”
But Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), another committee member, believes Arnold’s role at Meta indicates that Zuckerberg may not be willing to move away from censorship entirely.
“Meta is known for censoring conservative speech. Only after Zuckerberg was caught interfering in the election by censoring the Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020 did he promise to reform Meta’s ‘content moderation procedures,’” Steube told the Post.
“It seems like John Arnold, who has spent millions and millions on censorship efforts, should be the last person on Meta’s board if Zuckerberg were to have any seriousness about his promise.”
A spokesperson for Arnold told The Post: “John strongly believes that the fundamental principles of the First Amendment must be protected at all costs, which is why he has supported the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) since 2013, and is one of the reasons he now supports the University of Texas at Austin, an institution committed to free speech on campus.”
Asked about Arnold’s role on Meta’s board, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) criticized the company’s past efforts to suppress free speech: “Is there anything more Orwellian?” and noted that the “board (is) full of left-wing academics who decide free speech issues.”
While Meta has right-leaning members on its board, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former George W. Bush administration official Robert M. Kimmitt, lawmakers note that Arnold is far more political than anyone else on the board, especially since conservative firebrand Peter Thiel left in 2022.
Arnold, 50, began his career as an energy trader at Enron before launching the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, which earned him the title of America’s youngest billionaire in 2007. He closed the fund in 2012 and began making donations to address public policy issues through his philanthropic organization Arnold Ventures.
He donated $1.5 million to the Social Science Research Council that operates MediaWell, which “curates research and news on digital disinformation and misinformation” between 2018 and 2022, according to the 990 documents.
Research topics range from how To regulate “extreme speech actors” on smaller platforms like Parler for “Fighting an indestructible monster:”The legitimacy narratives of journalism during the Trump era” to criticize the Covid lab leak theory as “racist” and a “conspiracy theory.”
The organization has also He advocated for policies such as those implemented in the European Union that repress “deep and extreme speech.”
In 2020, Arnold donated $500,000 to Global Witness, an NGO run by left-wing billionaire George Soros. With support since 2002While Global Witness emphasises its commitment to protecting human rights, much of its recent research has focused on “election disinformation”.
Recent investigations by Global Witness have suggested that X “Elevate right-wing opinions“and that technology companies are not adequately addressing Stopping “climate misinformation”.”
Arnold donated $13.5 million to the New Venture Fund between 2016 and 2020. According to the non-profit organization Capital ResearchThe fund lobbied for increased government oversight of free speech, including net neutrality. And a 2022 Washington Examiner report suggests Arnold gave nearly $10 million more between 2019 and 2021 to “groups linked to the movement to combat so-called disinformation and misinformation.”
Over the past five years, he has also donated more than $45 million to organizations pushing for bail reform in New York. According to a report by Fox News —even more than the $40 million Soros has donated to these efforts.
While Arnold previously worked with Facebook Financing an association in 2018 who sought to study how social media impacted elections, does not have much experience in social media beyond that.
Last month he acknowledged in a Bloomberg Interview that his appointment in February to Meta’s board of directors came as a surprise: “I’m not a tech person, which made the invitation even more surprising.
“I think they were looking for someone who had some energy experience… the amount of infrastructure required to operate data centers for AI is immense,” Arnold said.
“My experience in public policy is an asset to them.”
“John Arnold brings a wealth of experience to Meta’s Board of Directors, particularly in energy and infrastructure, which are critical areas of expertise as Meta builds the next generation of computing,” Meta said in a statement.
