The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday pledged to no longer accept any donations from large technology companies over a perceived bias against conservative views from Big Tech giants such as Facebook and Google.
“The Heritage Foundation will not in good conscience accept money from companies that repeatedly and blatantly attempt to silence conservative speech they don’t agree with,” James said in her statement. “Every time a new case of censorship comes to light, these companies trot out excuses and promises to do better. Enough is enough. I stand united with other conservative leaders against Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices.”
We rejected six-figure donations from Facebook and Google last year.
Today we’re pledging to no longer accept financial support from Big Tech companies as long as they continue to suppress conservative viewpoints. https://t.co/5bEOk9Ne6G
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) May 4, 2021
The announcement comes after the conservative think tank reportedly turned down a pair of six-figure contributions from Facebook and Google last year, according to Axios.
In October, Heritage rejected a $225,000 donation from Google and said that it would return a $150,000 donation from Facebook.
“We cannot in good conscience take money from a company that repeatedly, and blatantly, suppresses conservative speech on your platforms,” James wrote in a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the time.
Heritage accused Facebook of blocking referral traffic to the foundation’s news and opinion website at the time. It also alleged that Google had censored its YouTube videos, including by adding a disclaimer on a pre-election video “meant to cast doubt on the credibility of our well-sourced claims about the risks of voting by mail.”
A letter from the think tank to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also cited the platform’s decision to limit the reach of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop as a point of concern.
Google had previously donated a total of $1.55 million to the foundation, a spokesperson reportedly told Axios, while Facebook had contributed $275,000.
Meanwhile, Heritage received more than a whopping $87 million in donations in 2019 alone, according to its financial statements for the year.
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