SUMMARY Citing “rising misinformation and violent rhetoric online,” Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro in September 2025 visited a Dauphin County school to highlight the PA Department of Education’s Information and Media Literacy Toolkit, which would give teachers and students to identify misinformation Shapiro during the visit discussed the need to identify “hateful” or “extreme” language on…
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SUMMARY The Knight Foundation is one of the most well resourced philanthropic organizations in the United States, with $2.6 billion in assets as of 2023. The Foundation is tied to the foreign policy blob — in the 2010s it entered a public-private partnership with USAID to facilitate influence operations abroad. After the 2016 election, it…
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Ofcom, the UK’s media and online communications regulator charged with enforcing the country’s draconian Online Safety Act (OSA) has claimed that the First Amendment does not protect American companies from its fines. The UK regulator is attempting to impose a 20,000 GBP fine on 4chan, an American-based discussion forum known for both political incorrectness and…
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SUMMARY Less than two months before the 2024 presidential election, Georgetown University hosted an online panel titled “Is Democracy a Democratic Form of Government?” Panelists included the vice president of research at Freedom House, a U.S. State Department-funded nonprofit tracking “democratization” and freedom worldwide. Freedom House received approximately $80 million from the U.S. taxpayer in…
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Beneath Wikipedia’s public brand of crowdsourced objectivity lies a troubling reality: a cadre of ideologically driven editors wielding deletion powers to suppress content that challenges dominant narratives. Recent attempts to erase pages on sensitive topics reveal a pattern of bias, one that undermines free speech and distorts historical records. From downplaying violent crimes to silencing…
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SUMMARY Wikipedia has recently been in the spotlight for its political bias, facing interrogation from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in addition to a spate of news coverage highlighting the online encyclopedia’s political bias. Multiple investigations have confirmed that Wikipedia is run by a tiny clique of mostly-anonymous editors, with 1 percent of users responsible for…
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In the early days of the platform censorship era, the favored approach was relatively blunt: ban big accounts, remove posts, issue takedowns of disfavored narratives, or suspend users whose content crossed certain lines. As this approach has become unpopular, the censorship industry now aims for something more insidious: rather than outright removing speech, the new…
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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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A lawyer representing Google admitted to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that President Joe Biden and his officials pressured the search giant to censor disfavored voices on YouTube. Google said in the letter that the Biden administration’s pressure was “unacceptable and wrong” The letter reveals that the Biden administration pressured YouTube to censor…
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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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