The following is a list of the top 50 organisations in the global Censorship Industrial Complex. You may be shocked to realise that the UK Army’s 77th Brigade is ranked a lowly number 42. That should tell you something!
The following are excerpts from ‘Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organisations to Know’ published by Racket News on 10 May 2023. In the main, our excerpts serve to provide a simplified list of the organisations included in Racket News’ comprehensive Report. For ease of reference, the numbers in our list correlate to the numbers in the original Report. We recommend readers at the very least select one or two organisations of interest and read the details the Report contains HERE. It will be eye-opening.
“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex (“CIC”).” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organisation type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons.
A democratic society requires the nourishment of free debate, disagreement, and intellectual tension, but the groups below seek instead a “shared vocabulary” to deploy on the hybrid battlefield. They propose to serve as the guardians of that “vocabulary.”
1. Information Futures Lab (IFL) at Brown University (formerly, First Draft News)
You may have read about them when: You first heard the terms Mis-, dis-, and malinformation. The term was coined by FD Director Claire Wardle. IFL/FD are also the only academic/non-profit organisation involved in the Trusted News Initiative, a large-scale legacy media consortium established to control debate around the pandemic response.
What we know about funding: First Draft was funded by a huge number of entities including Craig Newmark, Rockefeller, the National Science Foundation, Facebook, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Knight Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Open Society Foundations, and more. Funding for the IFL includes the Rockefeller Foundation for a “building vaccine demand” initiative.
Closely connected to: Almost all the leading lights of the CIC, including the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Trusted News Initiative, Shorenstein Centre, DFRLabs, the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, Meedan, and Bellingcat.
2. Meedan. You may have read about them when: Meedan ran a range of Covid-19 misinformation initiatives “to support pandemic fact-checking efforts” with funding from Big Tech, the Omidyar Foundation, the National Science Foundation and more. Partners included Britain’s now-disgraced Behavioural Insights Team, or “nudge unit.” In sum: Meedan exemplifies the NGO-to-Stasi stylistic shift, where spying and snitching on private messages in the name of “anti-disinformation” is now considered a public good.
3. Harvard Shorenstein Centre on Media, Politics and Public Policy (Technology and Social Change Project). Type: An elite academic project once regarded as one of the leading centres in the “anti-disinformation” field. In sum: An “anti-disinformation” project that got it wrong so often, even the centre that housed it cut ties.
4. The Public Good Projects. Type: Non-profit consultancy, specialising in health communications, marketing, technology and “disinformation.” In sum: A sophisticated communications and technology outfit with close Big Tech and Big Pharma partners, and a mission to stop “misinformation.”
5. Graphika. Type: For-profit firm with defence connections specialising in “digital marketing and disinformation & analysis.” In sum: With deep Pentagon ties and a patina of public-facing commercial legitimacy, Graphika is set up to be the Rand Corporation of the Anti-Disinformation age.
6. Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLabs) of the Atlantic Council. Type: Public-facing disinformation research arm of highly influential, extravagantly funded, NATO-aligned think tank, the Atlantic Council.
7. Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). In sum: The Stanford Internet Observatory may or may not continue to have a high-profile role in building out the CIC, but figures like Renee DiResta and Alex Stamos have already fulfilled a substantial historical function by organising cross-platform content sweeps for Covid-19 and the 2020 election.
8. Poynter Institute / International Fact-Checking Network
What we know about funding: Over $4 million a year goes from Facebook to IFCN partner organisations. Poynter and Politifact meanwhile list the Craig Newmark Foundation, the Koch Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the National Endowment for Democracy, Microsoft, and the Washington Post as funders, among others.
What they do/What they are selling: At-scale, enterprise effort to fact-check earth.
Gibberish verbiage: Little to none. IFCN/Politifact are mostly operated and maintained by people with relationships to journalism, and its products are designed to be consumed by broad audiences.
In sum: The IFCN in particular is a huge-scale fact-checking operation whose conflicted relationship with Meta/Facebook may provide a template for future truth contractors.
9. Integrity Initiative / Institute for Statecraft. Type: Shady-as-F spook world surveillance and information control plan that will send you voiding in terror. In sum: Straight Outta Orwell! The Integrity Initiative documents represent one of the most consequential intelligence leaks of all time — the very dirty underpants of NATO.
10. National Conference on Citizenship / Algorithmic Transparency Institute. You may have read about them when: Via its Junkipedia initiative. ATI also runs the “Civic Listening Corps,” “a volunteer network of individuals trained to monitor for, critically evaluate, and report misinformation.”
PERCEPTION RESET 