At a Thursday private dinner hosted by his Open Society Foundations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, billionaire George Soros accused Facebook of trying to secure Donald Trump ‘s reelection, Breitbart reports.
Soros appears to believe that if Facebook succeeds, Trump will, in turn, protect the massive social media and technology company from the current efforts to break it apart.
“Facebook will work to re-elect Trump and Trump will protect Facebook. It makes me very concerned about the outcome of 2020.”
Soros accused Trump of being a narcissistic “con man” who desired to have the world “revolve around him.” Upon winning the presidency, Soros said Trump’s ego grew and drove the transformation of his narcissism into a “malignant disease.”
Although Facebook has denied Soros’ accusations, the billionaire has taken aim at the company before. In 2018, Soros blasted social media companies in general for intentionally creating their services to be addictive.
“This can be very harmful, particularly to adolescents. As Facebook and Google have grown into ever more powerful monopolies, they have become obstacles to innovation, and they have caused a variety of problems of which we are only now beginning to become aware.”
Soros isn’t the only one with such criticism of social media companies. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang previously criticized big tech companies for harnessing addiction for profit. He quoted his friend, former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris, who said that some of the brightest engineers in the country are using their skills to transform supercomputers into “slot machines and dopamine delivery devices for teenagers.”
Aside from concerns of addiction, Facebook continues to face criticism for refusing to monitor the accuracy of political ads on its platform. Although the platform is reportedly hiring part-time fact-checkers to combat misinformation, Trump’s reelection campaign has reportedly run more than 200 misleading political advertisements on the platform, CNN reported. Many of said ads allegedly target mainstream media networks, which the Trump campaign suggests are fighting to stop his Super Bowl ad from airing.
“We know the Fake News media will do everything they can to ensure our ad never sees the light of day,” one ad reportedly said of the Trump campaign’s planned Super Bowl ad.
Despite the campaign’s accusations, the Trump Super Bowl ad is reportedly running regardless due to federal regulations. The ad will appear on Fox News for 60 seconds and reportedly costs at least $10 million. In addition to Trump, the network will likely air a commercial for Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg .