America First Legal (AFL) released documents reportedly showing coordination between the U.S. and U.K. governments and biased private entities to suppress online free speech.
AFL noted Thursday that the “censorship scheme” included the infamous Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) along with the U.K. government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The U.K. and U.S. agencies developed and utilized tools to identify supposed “disinformation” online, which the entities aimed to see censored. AFL wrote that USAID even created a “Disinformation Primer.”
The government agencies and “media censorship organizations” were “all working in lock-step to manipulate public discourse, control media narratives, and suppress free speech,” AFL announced. GEC was officially shut down by the Biden administration following pressure from free speech advocates, but fragments of the entity survived, possibly continuing years of collaboration with private entities to pressure social media companies to censor free speech.
The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the U.S. government agencies framed certain online speech as “disinformation” that needed to be censored.
On Dec. 12, 2020, GEC emailed USAID concerning GEC’s “Covid-19 Propaganda and Disinformation Products” to request information on what USAID was “doing to mitigate and counter adversarial attempts to exploit Covid-19 for their own propaganda and disinformation purposes.”
GEC subsequently highlighted propaganda from hostile foreign governments like the Chinese Communist Party on platforms including Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. But it also flagged protected free speech. The British FCDO was copied in these communications.
For instance, British right-leaning activist Tommy Robinson was labeled a “white supremacist.” His supposedly dangerous content consisted of actual footage of Jan. 6 protesters being welcomed into the Capitol by police, along with his assertions that some government officials manipulated the event that day. But AFL further states that “[t]he GEC coordinated with private media censorship firms, including Poynter and NewsGuard,” which MRC has repeatedly exposed for significant left-leaning bias.
In a Nov. 2020 email, NewsGuard General Manager Matt Skibinski provided government employees with information on how to install, access and use NewsGuard ratings for links on Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
AFL Senior Counsel Andrew Block expressed shock at the revelations:
“The partnership between USAID and the Global Engagement Center is bad news for the American people. Add in the fact that they were coordinating with internet censorship enforcers at NewsGuard and Poynter, and you can start to see just how dangerous this unholy alliance is for free speech and free expression. Thankfully, the GEC is shuttered and USAID is being exposed — but lawmakers should take note of this example as they consider legislation to ensure the federal government actually serves American principles and interests.”
One lawmaker has already taken note. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) reacted to the AFL’s report on X. “We can’t claim to value free speech as long as our government runs an international government censorship program[.] This must end immediately and never happen again,” he said.
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