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 the Stanford Internet Observatory, a major online censorship hub that participated in the DHS-created Election Integrity Partnership, the most influential group that worked to censor the 2020 election.
In 2021 Masterson was asked by New York Times reporter Shira Ovide what government officials and Internet platforms had done to stop disinformation from having a material impact on the 2020 election.
“Happy to talk regarding the work we (the feds) did in coordination with social media companies to anticipate and respond to efforts to undermine the election,” Masterson emailed Ovide.
Masterson’s response suggested that CISA was in close contact with platforms like Twitter throughout the 2020 election cycle.
Other communications from Masterson further illustrate his strong advocacy for government snooping on social media. After joining Microsoft in February 2022, Masterson exchanged text messages with DHS Director and former NSA official Jen Easterly, addressing her concern that DHS needed to improve its collaboration with social media platforms to “pre-bunk” and “de-bunk” misinformation.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t” Masterson replied. “It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain.”
Source – Lee Fang
Microsoft’s role in the Disinformation Governance Board
Masterson is also remembered as the architect of one of DHS’s most controversial incidents in the evolution of the censorship industry: the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) at DHS.
In July 2021, Masterson coauthored an op-ed for the Virality Project—a Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) project focused on combating COVID-19 misinformation—titled “The Case for a Mis- and Disinformation Center of Excellence.”
In the article, Masterson proposed the establishment of a government entity explicitly tasked with “reducing the supply of mis- and disinformation by making it less prevalent in our information spaces.” He advocated for this new task force to be housed within CISA where it would be empowered to exercise broad federal oversight over the dissemination of information, particularly on social media platforms.
Masterson also appears to have been in regular contact with the White House as the DGB was being formulated. Just one month prior to him publishing the oped, he met with White House NSC official Puneet Khan and CISA MDM Chief Brian Scully. The details of the meeting aren’t known but he was joined by SIO founders Alex Stamos and Adriana Stephan.
The SIO was ultimately shuttered in 2024 after several congressional investigations determined that it had been coopted by the federal government to “monitor and censor American’s online speech” in advance of the 2020 election.
Masterson has continued his censorship crusade since joining Microsoft. In November 2023, he testified at an AI forum sponsored by Senator Chuck Grassley (D-NY) about the dangers of misinformation.
Masterson told the Senator that Microsoft had implemented new tools as part of Bing generative AI search including classifiers, metaprompts, provenance tools, and enhanced reporting functionalities to “prohibit… using these services to create or share information that is fraudulent, false, or misleading.” Left unsaid is who or what would determine the truthfulness of the information.
On April 27, 2022, the DGB was announced during a 2023 budget hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. The board lasted just three weeks before it was disbanded following a national outcry from policymakers, opinion leaders, the media and First Amendment advocates.
The controversy centered on President Biden’s decision to appoint Nina Jankowicz as the head of the DGB. Jankowicz, a writer and commentator with far-left views, had previously promoted the widely discredited claim that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election. She also publicly suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The public record shows that Tim Maurer, another current top Microsoft executive was also heavily involved in the establishment of the DGB and interfaced often with Jankowicz as the DGB was being formulated. Maurer who was hired by Microsoft in December 2023 as a senior director for cybersecurity policy, previously served as a DHS political appointee and later as a top official on the White House National Security Council (NSC).
Although heavily redacted, FOIA logs released by the DHS in 2022 reveal several exchanges in which Maurer discussed issues related to the “Disinfo Gov Board Steering Group,” and other exchanges with Jankowicz.
Visitor logs reveal that on January 29, 2024, just one month after joining Microsoft, Maurer returned to the White House for a meeting with the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The purpose of the meeting is unclear, but he was joined by Biden Administration officials from the Departments of Energy and Education, and the National Science Foundation among others.
