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Feb 10, 2022 — Thiel cofounded The Stanford Review and served as its editor. The journal, pretentious and sneering, attacked political correctness on campus ...

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review BS

the Stanford Internet Observatory’s reign of censorship is finally coming to an end. The group, part of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, has been investigating misinformation and social media abuse for five years. Now, it is reportedly being dismantled.

Although the Stanford Internet Observatory, or SIO, pledged its work was to “defend democracy,” it trampled on founding American principles as it sought to implement a censorship regime to quiet those questioning the political establishment. The SIO would likely stay afloat if it had merely been conducting research. However, since the organization’s conception, it has been a key player in divisive government schemes to suppress and limit freedom of speech—ultimately leading to its demise.

The SIO’s role in monitoring and censoring online speech has garnered widespread political and legal scrutiny for stifling protected speech in conjunction with the federal government. The SIO-led so-called Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), composed of the University of Washington, Graphika Inc., and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), silenced anti-mainstream narratives at the height of the 2020 presidential race in blatant disregard of the First Amendment.

Emails from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reveal that the federal agency secretly collaborated with the EIP to censor vast amounts of speech deemed “threatening” and “dangerous” to its agenda. Journalist Matt Taibbi’s reporting detailed Stanford’s abandonment of free expression, open discourse, and intellectual diversity as it aided CISA in an unprecedented crackdown against political topics damaging to Democrats and the pro-lockdown left.

CISA and the EIP never cared about democracy. They did not even aim to protect the American public from misinformation, as shown by the dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 origin “conspiracy theories,” later revealed as anything but. Instead, they wanted to dictate a false reality and silence those who dared to question it.

Taibbi’s reporting instead reveals a conspiracy by federal agencies and left-wing non-profits, including MITRE, Omidyar Network, Common Cause, the Democratic National Committee, the Defending Digital Democracy Project, and the NAACP, which provided misinformation reports to Stanford and the EIP. In 2023, a federal district judge found this practice violated the First Amendment in Murthy v. Missouri—a decision now under review by the Supreme Court. These highly partisan organizations, including the Stanford-backed EIP, were given governmental influence and power to decide what “disinformation” was in a campaign to suppress inconvenient truths.

The Stanford students hired by the SIO were complicit in the mass censorship and manipulation of public opinion. Teams of students were asked to use algorithms to flag content on various social media platforms that challenged mainstream narratives; many of Stanford’s tech-focused students were employed to perpetuate a dystopian thought control scheme.

However, as Taibbi’s investigation showed, the EIP is only the tip of the iceberg. Another project called the Virality Project, led by the SIO in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General, the CDC, DHS’s CISA, and the State Department's Global Engagement Center, was identified PASSIVE as a pseudo-truth machine weaponized for the suppression of “misinformation.” Project clients included several Facebook contracts, one Project Vox-Google contract, and one NGO contract for COVID-19 hoax tracking. Like the EIP, the Virality Project encouraged social media platforms to take action even against “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel hesitancy.”

The Virality Project was more concerned with maintaining control over the public through their narrative rather than promoting free speech and discussion surrounding medical autonomy and concerns over the COVID-19 vaccine’s rapid development. As a result, it did not allow people to read about possible vaccine side effects, such as myocarditis. Even Stanford’s medically qualified dissenting voices, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Scott Atlas, who spoke out against former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci’s pandemic response and lockdowns, were censored by social media platforms for exercising their freedom of speech.

This behavior disproves claims that the SIO was acting out of a genuine desire to prevent the spread of disinformation, but rather to prevent the spread of information that was inconvenient or ran counter to progressive dogma. The SIO’s pathetic response, stating, “it is difficult to rebut all of these inaccurate claims without repeating the falsehoods and contributing to their further spread,” underscores its lack of interest in serving the American people or furthering open discourse. The organization’s total dismissal of concerns about the gravity of their actions exposes these cowards for what they are: a power-hungry bureaucracy aiming to control Americans’ behavior with complete disregard for their liberties.

While the SIO’s collapse is a massive step in the right direction, we must be wary of our government’s continued antagonism toward freedom of speech. With the 2024 election approaching, we cannot be silent about Stanford’s—or any other institution’s— disregard for First Amendment rights. Almost always, such acts are done under the insidious guise of “safety.” Safety without liberty is tyranny with a bike helmet and swim floaties. We must reject this mantra as the evil that it is. Give me liberty, or give me… well, you know the rest.

Ultimately, it does not matter whether the claims censored by the SIO were correct. The First Amendment does not only protect our ability to make accurate statements but to say whatever we want. In America, it is up to each citizen to discern what is true and what is false, not the government.

Our universities ought to be havens of academic freedom, and our government has no right to tell us what we can and cannot say and which opinions we can and cannot hear. It is time for everyone, regardless of political affiliation, to demand that the federal government and universities not trample on our rights. The United States was never meant to be an echo chamber. If we do not push back now, we may lose the very core of our country: freedom.

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contrast

stanford University officials have denied that the school is shutting down its prominent research group studying online harms, the Stanford Internet Observatory, but acknowledged funding challenges.

“Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure,” the university said in a recent statement following reports of its demise.

A June 13 Platformer article alleged Stanford “is quietly dismantling” the SIO. Founding director Alex Stamos left his position in November, the center’s research director, Renee DiResta, left “after her contract was not renewed” recently and other staff members were “told to look for jobs elsewhere,” the article wrote.

In a LinkedIn post Tuesday, DiResta wrote that “it’s unclear what the future holds, but several of us are no longer there.”

Conservative groups and lawmakers have hit the institute with costly lawsuits and congressional investigations. The bulk of the controversy is related to the Election Integrity Partnership, a research project within the observatory and in collaboration with the University of Washington and others that studied disinformation related to the 2020 election. As part of their work, researchers would identify certain social media posts as misleading and refer some to social media companies.

DiResta talked about the lawsuits related to her work at the center in a piece published in The Atlantic earlier this month.

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“Meanwhile, conservative groups are suing my former colleagues and me,” DiResta said in the article. “Stanford has run up huge legal bills. SIO’s future is unclear, and its effort to monitor election-related misinformation has been shelved.”

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan has spearheaded right-wing opposition to disinformation efforts, arguing conservatives are being censored when their social media posts are tagged as misinformation and alleging that the observatory is colluding with the government.

“Free speech wins again!” Jordan posted on X (formerly Twitter), after it was reported that the center would supposedly close down.

DiResta has denied that the center, with the Election Integrity Partnership, has the power to take down posts. Social media companies, not the observatory, have the ability to remove posts on their respective platforms.

The partnership, which culminated in an almost-300 page report, continued into the 2022 election. But, according to the EIP’s website, the project “finished its work after the 2022 election and will not be working on the 2024 or future elections.”

“The EIP’s collaborative model was tailored toward a specific event—Election 2020,” the researchers wrote in the report.

Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center said in a statement Monday that the SIO would “continue its important work” under the leadership of faculty director Jeff Hancock.

“SIO will continue its critical work on child safety and other online harms, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust & Safety, the Trust & Safety Research Conference, and the Trust & Safety Teaching Consortium,” its statement read. “Additionally, SIO faculty and staff will continue their work looking into psychological and media research questions associated with misinformation around the 2024 election.”

The center, which launched in 2019 with a $5 million grant from Craig Newman Philanthropies, openly admitted facing funding challenges.

“[The center’s] founding grants will soon be exhausted. As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership,” Stanford said.

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The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public will continue work on the 2024 election “along the same trajectory as our work with the Election Integrity Partnership in 2020 and 2022,” read a March post on the CIP website.

Kate Starbird, co-founder and faculty director of the CIP, wrote in a 2023 Seattle Times opinion piece that “[a]t the UW, we’re not buckling and won’t be bullied. Our team plans to continue our rapid research during the 2024 elections.”

“Though we are no longer collaborating on “rapid research” with the original partners in the Election Integrity Partnership, our real-time election research at UW continues and we are forming new collaborations to support and share this work,” Starbird wrote in a recent email to this news organization. “We continue to collaborate with researchers at SIO on work related to online rumoring and misinformation.”

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off bs note nothing on funding

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Our Mission

Founded in 1987, The Stanford Review is Stanford's Independent Newspaper. We aim to present alternative views on a wide range of issues, create a forum for rational debate on campus, and challenge those who disagree to participate. We publish news and opinion pieces during the academic year.

Our Staff

Josiah

Josiah Joner, Editor in Chief

Josiah is a senior from Vancouver, Washington studying economics. He is interested in state and local policy, and will happily sit and discuss anything from energy to public health policies. Josiah enjoys everything outdoors, playing the guitar, and the college football Saturdays of fall quarter. He has appeared on various major media outlets and testified before Congress. Contact Josiah at eic@stanfordreview.org.

Julia

Julia Steinberg, Executive Editor

Julia Steinberg is a junior from Los Angeles, CA studying comparative literature and history. Outside of the Review, Julia enjoys Russian literature, hiking, and live music (preferably rock).

Tom

Thomas Adamo, Managing Editor

Thomas is a junior from London studying mathematics and computer science. He is interested in Quant Finance and ‘00’s Indie Rock. When not working in Green Library, he plays on the rugby team and enjoys jamming on his guitar

John

John Puri, Cycle Editor

John is a sophomore from Des Moines, Iowa studying political science. He is particularly interested in American conservatism and its modern trajectory. Outside of class, he enjoys watching baseball, listening to Frank Sinatra, sipping chai, and reading the Wall Street Journal—often all at once.

Abhi

Abhi Desai, Deputy Cycle Editor

Abhi is a junior from Arizona studying computer science and history. In his free time he enjoys surfing and a good book.

Aditya

Aditya Prathap, Senior Editor

Aditya is a senior from Illinois and is studying philosophy. When not reading theology, Aditya can be found skateboarding and listening to Mac DeMarco.

Cees

Cees Armstrong, Staff Writer

Cees is a sophomore from the UK and Singapore who is prospectively studying mathematics. He is interested in international politics and all things sport. In his free time, he watches football matches, plays rugby, and debates for Stanford.

Isabella

Isabella Griepp, Staff Writer

Born and raised in San Francisco, Isabella is a senior majoring in classics and minoring in data science and modern languages (Spanish & Russian). Her faith in Christ is what’s most important to her; you can find her ski racing for Stan, making honey oatmilk lattes, and listening to country music.

Bethany

Bethany Lorden, Staff Writer

Bethany is a sophomore from Colorado studying english and physics. Outside the Review, you might find her hiking, writing poetry, or playing harmonica.

Dylan

Dylan Rem, Staff Writer

Dylan is a freshman from Malibu, California studying political science and economics. In his free time he enjoys riding his dirt bike, skiing, and relaxing by the beach.

Elsa

Elsa Johnson, Staff Writer

Elsa is a freshman from Colorado and Minnesota studying international relations and East Asian studies. In her free time, Elsa can be found listening to indie rock and Kanye, lifting weights, crocheting, reading Russian literature, or watching Tarantino films.

Aadi

Aadi Golchha, Staff Writer

Aadi is a freshman from Auckland, New Zealand, studying computer science and mathematics. He is a proud advocate for the principles of free markets and classical liberalism. He was formerly the host of The Economics Review podcast, and is passionate about covering issues affecting the Stanford community as well as broader economic affairs.

Joseph

Joseph Seiba, Technology Manager

Joseph is a senior from McAllen, Texas, studying electrical engineering and computer science. He plays rugby and enjoys long drives with gas station coffee.

Walker

Walker Stewart, Business Manager & Editor in Chief Emeritus

Walker is a senior studying computer science and history from Jupiter, Florida. When he's not reading about the nineteenth century or writing for the Review, you can find him listening to country music, golfing or searching for good food.

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