The internet has new forms of influencing power that the previous media did not have. What he warns against is the centralisation of those powers in the hands of a few players, and the possibility of these players working together with totalitarian governments to create a dystopian surveillance state (personally, what I am even more freaked out about is the idea of a decentralised totalitarian surveillance state - there was a recent Wired article on how China is experimenting with this).
The claim that Soros has a "strong states are fascist"-rhetoric does not make much sense either. This is what he actually says in the article:
> “The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against them,”
There are no business incentives for Facebook and Google to clean up their act, so he explicitly calls for more regulation. How is that not asking for a strong government? Of course, that's not what GP meant with "strong states". His "strong states are fascist" claim is that weird kind of self-denial that you typically see with people defending fascist governmental actions, but not wanting to be called fascist.
It typically plays out like this: person A argues that "government X is fascist, because A, B and C", where A, B and C are typically human rights violations carried out by X. Then person B, who is pro-X, reasons "But A, B and C are ways for our state to be strong! X is not fascist, you are just against strong states!" No, person A isn't against strong states. Person B just has ridiculous definitions of what a strong state is. The governments of the Nordic countries enforce a ton of regulation on companies within it. I would consider that a strong government. Few would call it fascist. Person B would probably call it weak.
In my experience every populist movement can be traced to a single charismatic leader with a dictatorial streak who promises the moon and the sky to the hapless masses. I am and forever will be thoroughly unimpressed with any populist movement. It will always end badly.
I would say populous movements usually pre-date their charismatic leaders. Trump supporters aren't anti- immigration because of Trump, rather it was by embracing an existing populous anti-immigrant mentality that he achieved power.
I guess you think of the single leader as the "centralised" focal point of a populist movement. I agree, but it's not what the word centralised refer sto. Instead, it refers to the media being centralised or not.
Any leader needs a platform to broadcast their message from. Centralised media have (some) selective power over the narrative, and therefore the role of gatekeepers or enablers (like when controversial figures get disproportionate attention because it causes more clicks - see also [0][1]).
The decentralisation aspect of the internet undermines that, which in itself is value-neutral. This is not something that never happened before; the printing press allowed Luther to bypass the gatekeeping powers of the Catholic Church[2]. As I mentioned elsewhere, this lead to massive social upheaval ending in the Thirty Year's War, so it's not all positive (worth noting is that Luther's biggest issue was with the so-called "indulgences", which allowed people to buy off their sins[3][4]. How is that for unfair wealth inequality?)
The point is that the printing press meant that a lot more voices could be heard by a lot more people. The Internet takes that to the next level. A lot more of those "single charismatic leaders" suddenly have a potential audience (this might explain why I feel disdain for most YouTubers: a lot of them want an audience for the sake of having an audience, without having a story to tell).
The Internet decentralises populism because it decentralises all communication. Clay Shirky (from whom I stole the printing press example) has written a lot on this[5].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence
[5] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...
Not that I'm agreeing with the OP, but their point is subtler: Soros has his own tools for enabling whatever populist movements he wants to start. Shutting down Facebook's/Google's ability to empower populist movements denies others that same power, so it's of benefit to him (by letting him alone have that power).