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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SUMMARY Housed at DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s ostensible purpose is to help American communities respond to major disasters. FFO research has discovered that in the last 5 years, FEMA diverted to a new role: censorship and political indoctrination, by disbursing funds to Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, a DHS “counter-extremism” program that…
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On August 15, 2024 Microsoft published a lesson plan for teachers on “Information literacy fundamentals” as part of its Search Coach program, which involved NewsGuard as a partner. On this particular lesson plan, Microsoft worked with the Digital Inquiry Group, a NGO whose other partners include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Library of Congress,…
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SUMMARY Publicis Groupe is one of the world’s largest ad agencies, handling advertising and PR for a wide range of corporate clients including major pharmaceutical companies. Publicis subsidiaries have received over $500 million from lucrative U.S. government contracts, including the CDC’s national tobacco awareness campaign. In 2018, Publicis Groupe led the seed round for NewsGuard,…
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SUMMARY The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded a $2.6 million contract for “dis-, mis, and mal-information analysis” to Guidehouse Inc, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, in September 2024. FEMA is a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), home of the now-terminated “Disinformation Governance Board” and incubator of the Election Integrity Partnership, which…
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SUMMARY White House publications from 2022 shows that under the previous administration, the Federal government attempted to coordinate the global “counter-disinformation” industry, in an effort that spanned private and public sectors and traveled across borders. These efforts materialized in a White House-led interagency working group on “Information Integrity Research and Development,” overseen by the White…
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SUMMARY The EU’s Digital Services Act aims to impose massive fines on American tech companies that fail to comply with its draconian requirements to curb disfavored speech. Once the EU’s “voluntary” Code of Practice on Disinformation becomes mandatory, tech companies will be obligated under EU law to censor “disinformation” and “misinformation.” The Foundation for Freedom…
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Microsoft aims to smoothly transition from one presidential administration to the next. The company recently secured a major win in DC, receiving the official blessing of the President in a $500 billion AI investment partnership between SoftBank, Oracle, and Microsoft’s OpenAI. But as official policy turns against online censorship, the tech giant may have to…
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As the Foundation for Freedom Online recently reported, Microsoft stands out among tech companies for its commitment to censorship policies pushed by the previous administration. Previous FFO articles have explored the involvement of Microsoft employees in the creation of DHS’s “disinformation governance board,” and its role pushing “psychological inoculation” techniques to prime the public against…
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Matthew Masterson, currently Microsoft’s “director of information integrity,” is a deep state alumni, serving in a variety of roles across the Federal government including Senior Cybersecurity Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security (focused on “election security”), as well as the Election Assistance Commission. Hired by Microsoft in January 2022, he also previously worked at…
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