Microsoft has staked a claim in the growing field of “media literacy” and “digital literacy,” which aims to instruct members of the public – especially schoolchildren – in what types of digital media they ought to trust and distrust. As FFO has previously reported, media and digital literacy is the latest in a long string…
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SUMMARY The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British NGO with non-profit status in the US, has been plotting behind closed doors to “Kill Musk’s Twitter,” recently revealed internal emails show. CCDH has close ties with the US government and elected officials, including the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and former House Intelligence Committee…
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TrueMedia, an AI watchdog partnered with Microsoft, claims to be a non-partisan outfit that informs the public and policymakers about the proliferation of AI deepfakes designed to mislead voters during elections. In a glowing New York Times profile earlier this year presenting him as a foremost expert on the topic, University of Washington professor Oren Etzioni warned…
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The 2024 Paris Olympics draw to a close today, one of the most covered and discussed events of the year. Amid the flood of information, media blacklisting platform NewsGuard sought to bolster its image as an authority on “disinformation” and “misinformation” with a series on “false Olympics claims.” In a July 30 edition of its…
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SUMMARY The Digital Services Act (DSA) creates a unified framework for government-directed content moderation across the European Union. Each EU member state now has a “digital services coordinator,” with the power to penalize online platforms if they fail to adequately address “systemic risks,” including hate speech and misinformation. These official speech commissars can deputize third…
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Some of the censorship industry’s leading organizations are using public concern over kids’ online browsing habits to install themselves as gatekeepers to the minds of America’s K-12 students, determining what sources and viewpoints they should be exposed to, and what should be hidden from view. Screen usage among kids and adolescents is at an all-time…
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Overview: NewsGuard is a private company offering various products that purport to combat “misinformation.” Their leading product is a browser extension that attaches a “reliability” score to virtually every news website on the internet, with scores ranging from 1-100. A 2021 study by the Media Research Center found a 27-point difference in NewsGuard scores between…
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The era of online censorship was fueled by media-driven panics about “fake news” and “disinformation.” The focus of fear switched many times, from the spy-thriller narrative of Russian agents spreading disinformation intended to undermine U.S. elections, to “conspiracy theorists” questioning the official response to COVID-19 and undermining “election integrity” by raising concerns about mail-in ballot…
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SUMMARY Programmatic advertising, the automated buying and selling of digital ads based on demographic tracking and targeting, is the bedrock of the online economy, providing the majority of revenue for a large number of news websites and social media platforms. Post-2016, the censorship industry manufactured crises for brands by cherry-picking examples of ads next to…
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A recent FFO report revealed the Department of Justice is pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into “research” programs that monitor millions of Americans at scale, labeling them as potential violent extremists. The Justice Department explicitly sought out such programs, through a grant program on “domestic radicalization and violent extremism,” with $4,109,127 in grants awarded so…
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