If you say that a person or organization buys off another person or group, you are criticizing the fact that they are giving them something such as money so that they will not complain or cause trouble.
[disapproval]
...policies designed to buy off the working-class vote. [VERBPARTICLE noun]
In buying your children all these things, you are in a sense buying them off. [VERB noun PARTICLE]
See full dictionary entry for buy
buy off in British English
verb
1. (tr, adverb)
to pay (a person or group) to drop a charge, end opposition, relinquish a claim, etc
nounbuyoff
2.
a purchase
buy off in American English
to bribe
See full dictionary entry for buy
Examples of 'buy off' in a sentence
buy off
I don't think there's anything he wouldn't buy off me now.
Robert Wilson BLOOD IS DIRT (2002)
By the time the public discovers that a product is defective, the company has made so much money it can afford to buy off the victims.