Dear MoveOn member,
On Monday, the billionaire CEOs of Google, Facebook, Amazon, X, and TikTok—who together have trillions of dollars in personal wealth—all stood directly behind Donald Trump during his inauguration.1 It was a clear pledge of allegiance to him and his extremist policies, and a warning to the rest of us about what is to come during his second administration.
Just hours before the inauguration, TikTok sent a message to all 170 million U.S. users of the app, sharing blatant misinformation by falsely praising Trump for stopping the TikTok ban that he and his Republican allies in Congress were responsible for in the first place.2
Days earlier, Mark Zuckerberg announced that in response to Trump’s reelection, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) would no longer conduct fact-checking on posts, because, in Zuckerberg’s own words, fact checking is “too politically biased.”3
And of course, Elon Musk used X (formerly Twitter) throughout the campaign to spread right-wing conspiracy theories and boost Trump, and Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, used his position to stop the newspaper from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris.4,5
As more and more Americans, especially young people, rely on social media apps to get their news, the consolidation of tech billionaires behind Trump and the MAGA movement poses a major threat to the future of our country—which is why MoveOn is doing everything we can to fight back.
That work includes MoveOn undertaking a massive effort to move our digital tools—including the system we use to send you emails like this—to platforms that are aligned with the progressive movement. All while we are also running a full-court press to protect our communities by stopping Trump’s plans to cause even more chaos and further enrich these same corrupt billionaires.
MoveOn is migrating much of our digital infrastructure to a platform called ActionNetwork, which was created by a nonprofit organization with deep ties to the labor movement. We have also made the decision to no longer actively post content on X, and are working diligently to rebuild our social media presence on Bluesky, an open source platform with much stronger community controls.
We’re also investing even more heavily in tech security to help prevent hackers from attempting to infiltrate MoveOn or shut us down through coordinated online attacks.
And of course, we are organizing MoveOn’s millions of members to fight against abuses by big tech companies and stop attempts by Trump and other right-wing extremists from using these platforms to spread dangerous misinformation.
Essentially, we need to walk and chew gum at the same time.
We have to migrate our data piece by piece while also training volunteers to organize events in their communities.
We have to rebuild our digital infrastructure while also flooding Congress with calls.
We have to retrain our staff to use entirely new systems while ensuring that MoveOn’s millions of members are kept informed and given concrete ways to take action against the Trump administration.
It’s a lot of work, but we are confident that we have made the right decision and that MoveOn will be stronger, more secure, and better able to lead in the fights to come because of it.
Thanks for all you do.
–Britt, Tes, Ankur, Nita, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “Billionaires, tech titans, presidents: A guide to who stood where at Trump’s inauguration,” AP News, January 21, 2025
https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-who-stood-where-a689828e986838c1735aeef03f3b32b3
2. “TikTok thanks Trump after it begins restoring service to US users,” ABC News, January 19, 2025
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-restoring-service/story?id=117857636
3. “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes,” Meta, January 7, 2025
https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/
4. “Musk’s election falsehoods travel hundreds of times further on X than fact-checks from officials,” NBC News, October 25, 2024
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/musk-election-misinformation-x-officials-twitter-voting-rcna176938
5. “Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement,” NPR, October 29, 2024
https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/
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