Oscar Buynevich

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Black Box: Global Censorship Hub NED Reached Agreement with State Department to Conceal Government Grants from the Public
, By Oscar Buynevich

SUMMARY The National Endowment for Democracy is a grantmaking organization that receives substantially all of its $300 million annual budget from the State Department’s congressional appropriations.  In recent years, investigators and watchdog groups like FFO have faced difficulty locating NED’s grantees and projects, despite NED having a federal mandate to operate openly and share grantee…

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Newsela: The ‘Media Literacy’ Provider Active in 90 Percent of American Schools
, By Oscar Buynevich

SUMMARY “Media Literacy,” which teaches school children which information sources to trust and which to avoid, is expanding at the state level. Ed-tech platform Newsela, which is used in over 90% of American schools, is a leading provider of media literacy educational material. Newsela makes news articles readable for children of different reading levels, but…

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Cambridge ‘Psychological Inoculation’ Lab Claims Conservatives, Millennials, Gen Z More Susceptible to ‘Misinformation’
, By Oscar Buynevich

The Cambridge Social-Decision Making Lab (CSDMLab) has a Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST) that purports to test people’s susceptibility to so-called “misinformation.” Researchers at the lab have used the results of the test to portray younger people (millennials and Gen Z) and conservatives, who tend to rely less on mainstream media sources for news, as particularly…

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Wilson Center serious games initiative
DHS-Funded Video Game Pits ‘Superhero’ Government Against ‘Disinformation’
, By Oscar Buynevich

In 2022, the DHS awarded $750,000 under their Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Program (TVTP) to the developers of a counter-disinformation video game for children in grades 6-9. The project, titled “Defenders Against Disinformation: Defeating Disinformation with Digital Gaming” used the funds to create a video game that pitted “superhero” governments, industry partners, and legacy…

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The Censorship Industry’s Plan to Censor Latino Communities
, By Oscar Buynevich

SUMMARY The censorship industry is concerned by Latino voters’ growing sympathies for populism and Donald Trump. The National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), a purportedly nonpartisan nonprofit established by a Congressional charter, launched the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI), which pioneered efforts to monitor and censor Spanish online speech. ATI targets speech that has “ill effects,” regardless…

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DOJ censorship
The Department of Justice is Bankrolling the Censorship Industry
, By Oscar Buynevich

SUMMARY The National Institute for Justice (NIJ), the Department of Justice’s research and development agency, is funding ‘mis-, dis-, and mal- information’ (MDM) studies and “research on effective technologies and tools for identification, moderation, and/or removal of extremist content.” A $1 million NIJ grant will be used to create a dashboard equipped with an ‘MDM…

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