eBay founder Pierre Omidyar donated $509,500 to Accountable Tech in 2021 and 2022, also giving $2 million to at least six other organizations that condemned Elon Musk’s organization of Twitter. Accountable Tech and UltraViolet, another organization receiving donations from Omidyar, told companies that Musk’s Twitter takeover would “toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized” and to “pull your advertising spending from Twitter” if the platform reinstated Trump’s account.
From The Washington Free Beacon:
Omidyar's ties to the anti-Musk campaign is notable due to the personal history between the two billionaires. The eBay founder helped launch Musk into the ranks of the super-wealthy by buying PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002. Over the next two decades, Musk multiplied this fortune and climbed his way to the top of the Forbes billionaire list. ... In April, Data for Progress—a group that took $365,000 from Omidyar—called out Musk on Twitter for allegedly paying "$0 in federal income taxes in 2018." That grant was also removed from the Omidyar Network following Free Beacon inquiries. And in November, the director of Fight for the Future, which received $95,000 from Omidyar, published a column in Time magazine calling on activists to stop using Twitter and switch to competing platforms. Earlier this month, Omidyar was also listed as a sponsor of the Digital Content Next Summit. The trade association, which represents mainstream media outlets, is run by Jason Kint, one of Musk's most vocal critics.
