The federal government outsourced “misinformation” censorship efforts before and after the 2020 election to four private entities that received millions of dollars worth of federal grants.
Documentation newly released by Just the News revealed that the Homeland Security (DHS) and State departments worked with four private groups to censor alleged election-related “misinformation” before, during and after the 2020 election. This included social media posts, blog posts, and URLs for social media platforms. The censorship of the “Election Integrity Partnership [EIP]” was reportedly aimed at preventing election scandals from going viral and catching the eyes of important media outlets and reporters, stopping “disinformation before it went viral and during viral outbreaks.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was one of the entities designated by the government as allowed to file “tickets” requesting censorship to flag online content and bring it to platforms’ attention, Just the News reported. Left-leaning Common Cause and NAACP were also allowed to flag content. Since the same privilege was apparently not accorded the Republican National Committee, this would seem to have been a blatantly partisan censorship effort.
Censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story helped steal the election for Joe Biden, which the Media Research Center found in November 2020. The new revelations from Just the News say that the Biden administration awarded $2 million or more in federal grants to each of the groups that helped the government censor election information. Coincidence?
EIP’s staff worked 12- to 20-hour shifts September through mid-November 2020, Just the News wrote, as EIP stepped up its censorship efforts after the election occurred.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) said that the federal government is outsourcing censorship because the First Amendment restricts direct government censorship. Clyde told Just the News he is drafting legislation to prevent such activities.
Not only that, this same “Election Integrity Partnership” has returned prior to the 2022 midterms, according to the EIP website. EIP says it targets “attempts to suppress voting, confuse voters about election processes, or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The EIP allows federal agencies to file “tickets” requesting censorship.
Questions about election fraud are not free speech, according to EIP, and they must be censored. “We focus our attention both during the election cycle, as well as after it,” EIP boasts.
The members of EIP are Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and social media analytics firm Graphika.
The Stanford report on EIP’s 2020 activities said EIP “bridged the gap between government and civil society.” The report also boasted that it flagged 4,800 URLs, Just the News wrote. Platforms then reportedly took action on 35 percent of flagged URLs. Stanford’s report further said EIP “was formed to enable real-time information exchange between election officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, social media platforms, the media, and the research community.”
The Stanford report specifically slammed “Right-leaning ‘blue-check’ influencers.”
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