A consistent theme brought to light by FFO’s ongoing efforts to expose the censorship industry is the central role of the U.S. federal government, particularly the foreign policy and security establishment, in providing the funding and impetus to the whole-of-society campaign against “online disinformation.”
This state of affairs, which persisted until the second Trump Administration’s day-one executive order against federal censorship, saw federal agencies that were previously tasked with spreading U.S. influence abroad, or securing the homeland against foreign threats, fund campaigns of censorship against the American people.
In many cases, “counter-disinformation” organizations that on their face appear to be independent of the government are in fact either its current or former partners.
FFO recently published a report on the $100 million censorship funded established by the Knight Foundation, whose $2.6 billion in assets makes it one of the most well-funded philanthropic organizations. A key discovery highlighted in FFO’s report is the Knight Foundation’s ties to the U.S. foreign policy state — the same foreign policy state which made censorship a priority after 2016.
Digital Media as a Tool of Statecraft
In 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a major effort by the State Department and USAID to “defend internet freedom” and “train civil society activists in online organizing” around the world. As the era of the disinformation industry would later reveal, the two goals are not necessarily linked – but in 2010, the U.S. government thought of internet freedom in terms of securing the ability for their favored “civil society activists” to reach online audiences abroad.
In its announcement of the new initiative, the State Department outlined this stance in clear terms. The U.S. government, it explained, aimed to the burgeoning world of social media and online news to “advance the United States’ foreign policy agenda, by empowering its allies in civil society.
Unsurprisingly, the Middle East was identified as a key area of focus:
This was the era during which Jared Cohen, a key proponent of using digital media to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives, enjoyed considerably influence at the State Department. Cohen would later go on to become the founding director of Google Jigsaw — which became the tech giant’s censorship lab, working on techniques to “psychologically inoculate” the U.S. public against disinformation.
The State Department’s bet on social media as a means to spread U.S. influence was quickly proven correct. Less than a year after the government announced its support program for digital activists abroad, the Arab Spring broke out, toppling regimes that were longstanding targets of the U.S., including Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and (after over a decade of civil war) Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The influence of social media was widely credited as a critical factor in mobilizing the Arab public.
Foreign to Domestic, Freedom to Censorship
The Knight Foundation’s journey on the matter of internet censorship mirrors the U.S. government’s.
In the State Department’s 2010 announcement, the Knight Foundation was the only organization explicitly named as a public-private partner in its bid to harness digital technologies to promote the U.S. foreign policy agenda.
Knight, working alongside USAID, was tasked with implementing the the MATADOR (Media Assistance Utilizing Technological Advancements and Direct Online Response) program, training NGOs across Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa in the use of digital technologies in media, get-out-the-vote, and anti-corruption campaigns.
According to US State Department archives, the MATADOR program focused on “election monitoring, distribution of unbiased election news and information, encouraging youth participation in politics, getting out the vote, and engaging the public in monitoring corruption.”
By 2019, the Knight Foundation’s priorities had completely shifted. Much like the U.S government itself, the priority was no longer on “digital freedom” but on countering, containing, and censoring “disinformation.” And – also in tandem with the state – the focus shifted from foreign audiences to the domestic American population.
The foundation invested over $100 million in some of the worst offenders in the domestic censorship industry, including the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and the Global Disinformation Index, both of which would become well known for their efforts to shut down American political speech on social media.
It’s a case study in the “foreign-to-domestic switcharoo.” The Knight Foundation, once USAID’s sole public-private partner in an initiative to spread U.S. influence abroad via digital technologies, determined (after the first Trump election in 2016) that the new priority was exerting strict control over digital technologies – and their influence over the public – in the American homeland. In this, the Knight Foundation’s journey mirrored that of the U.S. permanent bureaucracy.
