Set up in 2024, the Knight-Georgetown Institute is a relatively new addition to the global maze of “counter-disinformation” hubs working to influence the design and content moderation practices of social media platforms. As FFO recently exposed, the Institute aims to fight “toxicity” and “disinformation” in part by connecting disinformation researchers to lawmakers — it is…
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SUMMARY The Knight Foundation has a long history of bankrolling online censorship using the pretext of combating “disinformation,” including efforts targeted at swing states in 2024 to “fortify the election.” The Knight-Georgetown Institute has become a hub for big names in the disinformation industry, including James Baker, the FBI’s Russiagate lawyer and formerly chief counsel…
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Emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests show that despite knowing that COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and side-effects were still an open question, CDC officials under the previous administration were still determined to paint concerns about the jab as “misinformation” as late as 2024. In a virtual meeting on January 9, 2024, CDC public…
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Editor’s note – following publication of this report, a representative of the Carnegie Endowment reached out to confirm that their senior fellow, Rachel Kleinfeld, had been falsely quoted by Reuters as attributing the assassin’s motivations to the far-right or groypers. Reuters has now acknowledged the error, removed the false quote, and issued a correction at…
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The European Union is on the verge of enacting one of the most sweeping surveillance regimes in the West, under the benign-sounding pretext of child protection. The legislation—dubbed Chat Control by critics—would force messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram to scan every private message sent on their platforms, destroying the concept of encryption and…
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SUMMARY In late April, a “disinformation” summit was held at the University of Cambridge in the UK, attracting well-known figures from the international censorship industry. One UK politician boasted of his regional legislature’s plans to weaponize the judicial system to ban political candidates from running for office if they violate online censorship laws. Another panelist…
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SUMMARY A 2022 memo prepared for the State Department advises rolling out “media literacy” and “digital literacy” lessons in schools to combat disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech. The report shows that children’s online safety was not the original motivation of the US federal government’s push for media and digital literacy curricula — it was the…
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SUMMARY A British media agency is at the center of a diplomatic row after allegations of election interference from the Slovakian government, under the pretext of “countering disinformation.” The agency, Zinc Network, has received over $12 million from the UK Foreign Office and over $13.7 million from USAID, the U.S. Department of State, and the…
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SUMMARY Under the previous administration, DHS spent $7 million, funneled through FEMA, to push media literacy lessons into schools. Ideologically biased, pro-censorship organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center and NewsGuard have led the way in building media literacy curricula. Numerous states including California, Rhode Island, Texas and Florida have passed new laws to ensure…
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SUMMARY Founded in the UK, Bellingcat is an “open source investigations” organization that received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED is an international NGO created by the U.S. government in the 1980s to perform influence operations previously carried out by the CIA. Bellingcat has been a major supporter of efforts to censor…
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