To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKnavu6SrZM

 

Michael Shellenberg and Alex Gutentag: Government-Funded Stanford Group Successfully Urged Censorship Of Republicans But Not Democrats For Equivalent Claims

By Michael Shellenberg and Alex Gutentag

The US government-funded Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) claims that its 2020 Election Integrity Project (EIP) and its 2021 Virality Project (VP) were“non-partisan research coalitions.” They did not discriminate against Republicans or conservatives, SIO insists.

But a new tranche of SIO files subpoenaed by the House Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Mark Green (R-TN), and Homeland Security Subcommittee for Oversight Chairman Dan Bishop (R-SC) reveal that SIO singled out Republicans for censorship, even though Democrats engaged in similar kinds of inaccurate or misleading speech.

One member of Congress singled out for censorship was alarmed to learn of the pattern. “In striving to silence duly elected Congressmen and prevent them from communicating with constituents,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Public, “this government-funded censorship network has shown itself to be a far greater threat to our representative democracy than any foreign nation.”

Representatives from Stanford Internet Observatory did not respond to a request for comment.

To see the pattern of partisan behavior, we have to go back to November 2020, when the EIP was well underway.

At 5:58 am, November 4, 2020, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-SC) tweeted, “The Silicon Valley Cartel is in on the STEAL! Censoring our President while DEMOCRATS work overtime to STEAL THIS ELECTION! I need you to join me in the fight to STOP THIS.!”

 At 8:32 AM on November 4, 2020, an EIP staff person wrote a note to Twitter staff in the Jira messaging system. It read, “Twitter team - We know you are aware of the #stopthesteal push but we have gathered here some of the major contributors which according to our data // past incidents are high priority incidents… We recommend actioning these quickly.”

The EIP representative flagged the above tweet and two others. Shortly after, Twitter censored at least three of Greene’s tweets, and these tweets are still censored on the platform.

When one clicks on the arrow to the right of the tweet, which normally allows a user to copy the link, a box pops up that reads, “Why can’t you share this? We try to keep X a place for healthy conversation, so we’ve disabled most of the ways to engage with this post.”

Twitter executives acknowledged their censorship of Greene internally.

At 6:24 pm, November 4, 2020, Twitter’s senior legal counsel, Sean Edgett, emailed other Twitter executives. “We continue robust enforcement of our policies and have labeled approximately 150 Tweets for premature claims of victory,” Edgett wrote. “Additionally, we continue to label and interstitial the account of House candidate Marjorie Taylor Green for violations of our policies.”

Defenders of the censorship advocacy by Stanford sometimes argue that only Republicans made false statements about the elections. SIO has said that Republicans and Trump supporters simply spread more falsehoods. “EIP’s research determined that accounts that supported President Trump’s inaccurate assertions around the election included more false statements than other accounts,” wrote SIO.

But many Democrats, including Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, have claimed, without evidence, that Republicans have stolen elections. For example, in May 2020, Abrams wrote on Twitter that “the GOP wins by impeding eligible citizens from voting.”

But where Twitter executives throttled Greene’s tweet, which cannot be shared, Abrams’ tweet has over 1,2000 retweets. It’s true that Abrams made her claim before EIP had been created. But other Democrats claimed election fraud while EIP was operational.

“Feeling oddly thankful that @staceyabrams had her own election stolen from her so that she had time to save America,” tweeted actor Edward Norton on January 6, 2021. “@staceyabrams had her election stolen from her,” tweeted woman’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe the same day.

Twitter censored neither the tweet by Norton nor by Rapinoe, even though they made accusations nearly identical to Greene’s.

EIP analysts might say that by January 2021, they only researched the 2020 election, not actively flagging content about other elections. But the partisan bias of SIO can also be seen in its approach to Covid. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and many Democratic officials made inaccurate claims about the ability of the Covid vaccine to prevent infection and transmission, yet the VP never flagged them.

In the summer of 2021, when VP was searching for Covid misinformation to report, Democrats like Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and California Governor Gavin Newsom pushed the misleading narrative that only unvaccinated people could spread Covid and that there was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

They made these claims well after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had admitted that “breakthrough infections” were common in vaccinated people. If VP cared about accuracy and objectivity, it would have recognized that this Democrat-driven narrative was not based on solid national data. As Rochelle Walensky said last June, the CDC never had aggregate Covid vaccination and hospitalization data.

When Twitter censored Greene, she accused the platform of violating the First Amendment. Internally, Twitter executives dismissed her allegation and told themselves that Greene was wrong.  However there is strong evidence that the Department of Homeland Security created EIP and VP to demand censorship on its behalf. What’s more, two of the university partners involved in EIP and VP received considerable funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is part of the federal government.

The exchanges between VP, EIP, and social media platforms raise a troubling question: Was SIO acting on behalf of the federal government when it demanded censorship of elected Republicans?

Partisan Weaponization Of Government To Coerce Censorship

Public previously reported that the idea for the EIP came from DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The above request by SIO that Twitter censor Rep. Greene tagged the DHS’ “Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center.”

The Twitter Files reveal a close relationship between DHS officials and Twitter executives. On Sat, Oct 24, 2020, senior DHS official Matthew Masterson emailed a top censor at Twitter, Yoel Roth. “Any chance you are willing to share a phone number so [CISA] Dir. [Chris] Krebs can reach out?”

Perhaps recognizing that the contact violated the First Amendment, Masterson added, “I understand if you aren’t comfortable doing that and would prefer he email.”

Roth responded by giving Masterson his phone number.

While Public has reported over the last two weeks on Stanford’s censorship efforts, this is the first time anyone has documented the clear partisan and ideological bias. VP even internally labeled some posts as simply “right-wing,” which suggests that SIO’s explicit intention was to censor for viewpoints.

In other cases, VP misrepresented political rhetoric as misinformation. In the spring of 2021, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called vaccine passports  “Biden’s Mark of the Beast.” But in its report to Twitter about this post, VP also flagged innocuous tweets from Greene that made no reference to the “mark of the beast.”

For example, one of Greene’s tweets that VP sent to Twitter stated, “We WILL NOT COMPLY with Biden’s vaccine ‘passports’!” Another simply said, “I OPPOSE vaccine passports.”

In VP’s report to Twitter about Greene, a VP analyst wrote that VP staff had already discussed her posts with Twitter during their weekly meetings with the company.

This was not the only time SIO and CISA targeted Republican members of Congress.

VP flagged Rep. Massie’s tweets about natural immunity twice and labeled his posts as “right wing.”

“Here’s a comprehensive study that tracked re-infections and COVID complications for 187,549 people with prior SARS-CoV2 infection,” Massie wrote in one of the flagged tweets, sharing an Israeli pre-print. “Conclusion: Effectiveness of immunity due to prior infection is the same as for the Pfizer vaccine,” he wrote.

“If the data show the vaccine is likely to harm young children more than the virus is likely to harm young children, giving children the vaccine as a sacrifice to save older adults is immoral and reprehensible,” Massie wrote in another flagged tweet.

“Hi TIOS Heroes,” a VP analyst wrote to Twitter, “Please note this narrative about ‘natural immunity’ being pushed by Rep. Thomas Massie, which we included in this week’s briefing.” Acquired immunity from infection is a well-established scientific concept. At the time of Massie’s tweet, Israeli data, which he previously cited, showed natural immunity to be effective in protecting against Covid infection. Yet VP internally labeled Massie as a “repeat offender.”

VP and EIP consistently conflated Republicans’ political speech with mis- and disinformation. On November 5, 2020, EIP flagged a tweet from Congressman Jody Hice that said, “GA’s handling of this election is embarrassing! Two days are gone and we still don’t know results… are you kidding? Worse yet, partisan ballots keep appearing. A fair vote & Trump wins, end of story! Stop the fraud!”

Again, Democrats have repeatedly claimed that elections were stolen from them and undermined faith in election results, as is their Constitutional right. Yet EIP considered only Republican speech that questioned election results to be a dangerous narrative that needed to be censored.

EIP sent Hice’s tweet to Twitter and wrote, “Hello Twitter – We are sending this over as it is from a prominent verified individual and poses a larger threat to quickly growing narratives.” EIP also tagged the DHS’ Information Sharing Analysis Center, writing, “ISAC – Tagging you as the statements are from another congressman and very location specific.”

The next day, EIP flagged a YouTube video posted by Congressman Clay Higgins. “Hi YouTube,” EIP wrote, “we wanted to flag this video for you quickly. It is of Congressman Clay Higgins declaring premature victory for Trump and that the election has been compromised. We are concerned this video could circulate widely.” VP used a label for Higgins and others called, “Individual in or aspiring to public office.”

“Ack, routing,” YouTube responded.

In another instance, EIP flagged North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis for declaring victory in his race before official sources called the election. “Facebook, Twitter,” EIP wrote, “we are sending this content over to you due to an early claim of victory in NC for Senator Thom Tillis.”

“Thanks, Twitter has received and is reviewing,” Twitter responded.

Not only did EIP and VP work with DHS to target conservatives, but their activities were also funded, in part, by NSF. In 2021, NSF gave SIO a five-year $750,000 grant to study misinformation while VP was ongoing. This grant was for collaboration with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP), a partner in EIP and VP. NSF gave CIP $2.25 million to study misinformation while participating in VP.

SIO claims that it did not use these grants for EIP or VP, but NSF lists a paper called “Repeat Spreaders and Election Delegitimization,” which uses EIP data, as research funded through its grant. Additionally, CIP admits that “UW personnel funded by Kate Starbird’s NSF CAREER grant did participate in post-election period analysis of EIP data for the partnership’s final report and for subsequent peer-reviewed publications.” NSF also gave Starbird grants to study election misinformation and Covid misinformation while CIP participated in EIP and VP.

This pattern of grant allocation strongly suggests that EIP and VP were not only created by DHS but also financially supported by the federal government.

Shut It Down

The Twitter Files and the demands SIO and its partners made of Twitter and other social media platforms show more than a bias toward censoring Republican members of Congress: they only show the censoring of Republican members of Congress. While VP did flag a prominent Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for censorship, he was not running for office at the time, nor was he an elected official. Moreover, while a Democrat, RFK has long been reviled by the party establishment. In contrast, EIP and VP appear to have explicitly targeted elected Republicans and “right-wing” beliefs.

As a result, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the US government and Stanford not only violated the First Amendment to the US Constitution and interfered in an election, but they also did so in a wholly partisan and ideological way.    

EIP and VP’s partisan demands for censorship shed new light on an oft-made claim by advocates of greater censorship at places like Stanford and Harvard. Republicans, they say, simply spread more misinformation. They point to studies that they have conducted that purport to prove those claims.

However the new information provided by SIO to Congress and the Twitter Files show that the bias was in the researchers’ selection of what they counted as misinformation in the first place. The reason they could claim that Republicans made more false claims than Democrats was simply because the researchers did not count Democrats’ claims of election fraud or misleading claims about Covid as misinformation.

As such, this episode should do more than add to the case for defunding and dismantling the Censorship Industrial Complex. It should also change how we consider claims about partisan bias in misinformation. It may be that the bias is not more significant among individuals in one party or the other but in the minds of the misinformation researchers. 

To view online: https://public.substack.com/p/government-funded-stanford-group