A conservative advocacy group launched a new tool Monday to track well-known organizations funded by Big Tech companies to publicize conflicts of interest.
The American Principles Project, a populist conservative group, launched BigTechFunding.org to track which think tanks, universities, and non-profit advocacy groups receive funding from tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple based on publicly available disclosures.
The group is focused on battling what they say is rampant censorship of conservatives by tech companies, such as Facebook and Google. The group favors reining the companies by changing federal law regarding online content moderation and creating more competition in the social media industry using antitrust laws and regulations.
The group’s new website has datasets that track the funding of hundreds of organizations — such as the Republican Governors Association, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and the Federalist Society — that APP says take money from Big Tech companies while pushing out ideas that support tech companies’ policy goals of having less regulation and scrutiny on them.
“Many of these organizations, which have great reputations, are using their trust with people to make arguments in favor of the Big Tech companies while taking money from them,” said Jon Schweppe, the director of policy and government affairs at the American Principles Project. “It’s a huge conflict of interest, and we want to highlight that.”
Although many of the organizations that APP takes issue with — such as the R Street Institute, a libertarian–leaning think tank, or Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group — are not complete “shills” for Big Tech companies, Schweppe said they have a direct relationship with the tech giants and are reliant on them for funding that allows their pro-tech ideas to spread among the general public.
Schweppe added that many of these organizations are well-liked by Republicans and conservatives due to their advocacy in favor of free markets, smaller government, and national debt reduction.
This allows them to be trusted when they make arguments in favor of the Big Tech companies, he said.
“The tech companies are laundering talking points through conservative organizations that people really like, but when they help the tech giants, they are not accurately representing Republicans. It creates a fake impression,” Schweppe said.
APP’s new website and tracking tool will focus on organizations that have received at least $10,000 from the Big Tech companies, while the average amount received by organizations is approximately $250,000, according to Schweppe.
Some organizations, such as the center-left think tank Brookings Institution, received millions of dollars from Microsoft in 2020. Many other conservative and liberal groups have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from tech companies in the past year.
Some high-profile Republicans have already come out in support of APP’s website, such as Makan Delrahim, former President Donald Trump’s assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.
Delrahim led the Trump administration’s investigations into monopolistic behavior by the tech giants and favored using antitrust laws to rein in companies, such as Facebook and Google.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are pushing their colleagues and other conservative organizations to stop taking money from the tech giants altogether.
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Senior House Republicans in April signed a pledge to stop taking campaign donations from Big Tech companies in the hope of pressuring others to follow their lead and create a movement that would reduce anti-conservative censorship and anti-competitive behavior.
