The Election Integrity Partnership was formed in the final days of the 2020 election “as a non-partisan coalition to empower the research community, election officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, social media platforms, and others to defend our elections against those who seek to undermine them by exploiting weaknesses in the online information environment.”
Those “weaknesses” are websites that don’t toe the company line on a variety of issues like “attempts to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters, or delegitimize election results without evidence.” Question an election, and the EIP reports you to social media companies. The organization bragged they were able to have 35% of the content they flagged removed.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee, also flagged purported misinformation through the consortium.
“No news organization should be subjected to an enemies/censorship list for reporting newsworthy facts” Just the News Editor in Chief John Solomon said in a statement. “It’s even more egregious that this censorship machinery was prodded, aided and sanctioned by the federal government.”
The way the system worked was the partnership “set up a ticket system where a user, such as someone from the State Department, would attach a warning label to certain accounts they deemed were spreading misinformation,” according to Human Events. Those users who had been ticketed could be referred to social media companies to be censored.
Jim Hoft, the publisher of Gateway Pundit, asks, “How is this any different from what happens in Communist Party-controlled China?” The answer is, not much different at all. The Chinese Communists rely on some non-governmental entities to do much of the leg work in censoring the public. Once a citizen or media outlet is on the government’s radar, it becomes easier to control its content.
“What happened is the government in the form of the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department made a deal with a consortium called the Election Integrity Partnership,” Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon told Sean Hannity on Fox, “and the goal was to outsource the job of censoring social media during the final four months of the 2020 election.”
They have since formalized a partnership that is killing conservative news sites in terms of audience and ad revenue.
“We noticed a massive drop off on and around the 2020 elections. It got really bad after [Jan. 6, 2021],” paired with apparent “increased leftwing bot activity,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote in a text message.
“Compared to my engagement on every other platform, there’s no question that this new revelation fits with our lived experience on Twitter,” he said. “That tax payer dollars are being spent to censor half the country is a travesty and whoever is behind this must be held accountable.”
“The definition of ‘disinformation’ is now any reported facts that go against the world view of the political establishment,” Breitbart News Editor in Chief Alexander Marlow wrote in an email.
EIP is getting so good at the censorship game that they can now “anticipate” misinformation.
Our team has been working on a "threat framework" for anticipating the spread of election-related rumors. Check out the table, thread, & blog. https://t.co/0rlQuhVtLb https://t.co/d2Dq67Vk3K pic.twitter.com/UY9v7j9RBn
— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird) September 24, 2022
“Science” in service to a political agenda. Chilling.
The report notes the two-way collaboration between the consortium and mainstream media organizations that went beyond briefings.
A New York Times reporter “spent Election Day co-located with EIP researchers” and “published an early piece about the emerging ‘Stop the Steal’ narrative,” according to the report, while The Washington Post and CNN were used by consortium researchers for fact-checks.
The left-right divide in America is more than just a political divide. It is a divide in reality. The two sides inhabit different universes. Left-wing organizations making determinations on what’s “true” and what’s “misinformation” is the most dangerous, anti-First Amendment, anti-freedom effort at staunching “misinformation” they could possibly invent. Not everyone sees the world the same way as left-wing liberals. There must be room for the nuance of opinion, for various shades of gray.
Where’s the appeal process? Who is deciding what is “misinformation” and what might be asking questions to get at the truth of the matter? Is there only one legitimate worldview that Americans must believe in?
Who died and made these guys king?
Censoring a conservative media company is more than a vanity punishment. This means life and death for companies that are almost wholly dependent on page view counts for survival. They grew those companies under a free speech regime that allowed for certain viewpoints to be aired despite some of the dubious claims made. But the EIP doesn’t trust people to decide for themselves what’s “news” and what’s “disinformation.” So the government’s bullyboys in the EIP take citizens by the hand and lead them to the true light of redemption — the “acceptable” point of view.
They’re not just censoring Just the News or Gateway Pundit. They are silencing dissent on the right. And with the whole world plugged into social media, there’s no choice but to fight like hell to change it.
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