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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A research project at Youngstown State University in Ohio, funded by a Department of Justice grants program, is scooping up millions of posts from Americans, storing them in a vast database, and analyzing them to identify common patterns of speech that can then be targeted for censorship. Targeted groups include conservative website The Gateway Pundit,…
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NewsGuard, the for-profit company backed by $750,000 in Pentagon funding that purports to rate the credibility of thousands of news sites by assigning them “news nutrition labels,” claims to be a politically neutral guide to the vast online news ecosystem, guiding users on the reliability of news sites. Its real purpose is blacklisting. Low NewsGuard…
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In 2023, Elon Musk metamorphosed X into, perhaps, the formidable opponent of the censorship industry since its birth in 2016. Musk, who named himself a “free speech absolutist” as he completed the acquisition of Twitter in October 2022, has made good in myriad respects on his promise to roll back speech suppression on the platform.…
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In a recently published report from the Center for Democracy and Technology entitled “Seismic Shifts: How Economic, Technological, and Political Trends are Challenging Independent Counter-Election-Disinformation Initiatives in the United States,” the censorship industry identified growing threats to itself, including increased public scrutiny, pressure from lawsuits, and Silicon Valley’s growing skepticism of censorship. Dean Jackson, a co-author…
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