Monday, October 14, 2024
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Private Groups Partnered with Feds to Censor Conservative Websites



Four private groups colluded with the federal government to censor conservatives during the 2020 election.

And they’re planning to repeat their behavior in 2022. 

As Just the News reported late last month, those four groups, who make up the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), include the following:

• Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO)

• the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public

• the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab

• social media analytics firm Graphika

The news website reported that EIP “worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards.”

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According to EIP’s website, members believe that “good information enables a virtuous cycle, bad information accelerates a vicious one.” 

“In an ‘information fog,’ real threats cannot be distinguished from spurious ones,” EIP members said. 

“Election administration and policy become increasingly directed at addressing phantom risks rather than real issues, and public perceptions of legitimacy become unmoored from underlying realities. This increases the chances of election subversion and political violence.”  

Per its website, EIP identifies as non-partisan.

But Just the News reported that EIP “set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.”  

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“Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content,” Just the News reported. 

“A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.”

Just the News reported this month that it, the New York PostFOX Newsthe Washington Examinerthe Epoch Times, and Breitbart, “were identified among the 20 ‘most prominent domains across election integrity incidents’ that were cited in tweets flagged by the Election Integrity Partnership and its collaborators.”

“The report also identified the 21 ‘most prominent repeat spreaders [of misinformation] on Twitter,’ all of them politically classified as ‘right,’” Just the News said. 

“Actor James Woods led that group, followed by The Gateway Pundit blog, Donald Trump Jr. and President Trump himself.”

EIP said they “had a 35 percent success rate getting flagged content removed, throttled or labeled.” 

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