“Facebook gave them [The Rockefeller Foundation] a hundred thousand dollars in ad credits per city,” revealed an inside source from the Rockefeller organization. According to recordings leaked to Citizen Journalism Foundation by the inside source, Facebook granted ad credits to the Rockefeller Foundation, amounting to at least “five hundred thousand dollars,” in 2021.

These credits were used to amplify public health initiatives and narratives aligned with the Biden administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO). John Spangler, the Former Director of Communications and Advocacy at the Rockefeller Foundation stated, “We’re offering them a lot of support,” while Estelle Willie, Director of Health Policy and Communications, chimed, “More to come, just trying to get all the freebies from tech!”

Spangler noted ongoing efforts to “help them [The Rockefeller Foundation] get, like, some ad credits from Facebook to support the study,” while Willie suggested keeping a tally of the free ads secured.

The group described using “tent pole moments” to increase public engagement with health messaging, likening the efforts to selling a “hot new product,” and calling their public health campaign approach “the sizzle and the steak.”

Notably, the leaked tapes coincide with a shift in Facebook’s content moderation policies. Mark Zuckerberg announced that the platform would abandon traditional fact-checking in favor of a Community Notes system. However, Zuckerberg’s public statements present a contrast to the internal actions revealed in the audio. While he has claimed that the Biden administration “pushed [Facebook] super hard” to suppress certain content, the ad credit grants suggest active collaboration to amplify specific narratives.