How free is speech in 2023?
The Censorship Industrial Complex consists of dozens of rich and powerful governmental and nongovernmental organizations around the world.
This page provides links to information that journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibi, and others have discovered during their investigation of the Twitter files. What they have discovered is shocking. For the past few years, United States Government employees have been telling social media platforms, like Twitter, to censor US citizens and journalists.
“Heads of state around the world, from the U.S. and Canada to Britain and New Zealand, are working together to censor their political opponents, lie to the public, and crack down on free speech — all in the name of fighting ‘disinformation,’ ‘extremism,’ and ‘hate.’” ~ Michael Shellenberger, Environmental Journalist
Censored
There is a pattern. Those urging censorship of “misinformation” are spreading it.
Those who condemn “extremism” demand extreme policies.
And those who denounce “hate”
are filled with loathing for their political enemies.
~ Michael Shellenberger
The Foundation for Freedom Online looked at censorship figures reported to the Department of Homeland Security for the 2020 election cycle and summarized the scope of the censorship campaign. Here is a partial list of what they found:
- 22 million tweets labeled “misinformation” on Twitter
- 859 million tweets were collected for “misinformation” analysis
- 120 analysts monitored social media “misinformation”
- 15 tech platforms were monitored for “misinformation,”
- <1 hour average response time between government partners and tech platforms;
- Dozens of “misinformation narratives” targeted for platform-wide throttling; and
- The Department of Homeland Security pressured social media companies to flag, throttle, or ban hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and Tweets.
Who is Involved?
- National security officials
- Many in upper ranks of the FBI, who knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic since 2019.
- The press establishment.
- The Aspen Institute, which sponsored a meeting of government officials and the media, to coordinate censorship efforts.
- CISA
- Stanford Internet Observatory
- Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) – Founded in 2020 as a coalition of government agencies, civil society organizations, social media platforms, and others to defend elections against those who seek to disseminate information that may influence the election outcome in a way unfavorable to the coalition.
- Stanford Internet Observatory
- University of Washington Center for an Informed Public
- , focuses on a narrow scope of topics that are demonstrably harmful to the democratic process: attempts to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters, or delegitimize election results without evidence. We are interested in these dynamics both during the election cycle as well as after the election, when public perceptions of its legitimacy continue to be formed.
Learn More
- Censorship Industrial Complex.pdf – Michael Shellenberger’s Congressional Testimony presents the massive censorship of US officials, March 9.
- Public Substack – Michael Shellenbeger’s Videos, essays, etc.
- This is Totalitarianism – Michael Shellenberger’s Interview with Robby Soave and Batya Ungar-Sargon of The Hill. “It is terrifying to imagine what might have happened had Elon Musk not taken over Twitter and allowed independent journalists to expose the U.S. government’s censorship operation.”
- Joe Rogan Interview with Michael Shellenberger
- Jacob Siegel, a former Army intelligence officer, published “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” – This article chronicles how US government officials created a “Ministry of Truth” to wage an Information War on U.S. citizens. Under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, this Ministry of Truth “operated an industrial-scale censorship machine in which the government and NGOs sent tickets to the tech companies that flagged objectionable content they wanted scrubbed. That structure allowed the DHS to outsource its work to the Election Integrity Project (EIP), a consortium of four groups: the Stanford Internet Observatory; private anti-disinformation company Graphika (which had formerly been employed by the Defense Department against groups like ISIS in the war on terror); Washington University’s Center for an Informed Public; and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab,” ~ according to Siegel.
- Jacob Siegel Interview on April 5, 2023 – Michael Shellenbeerger interviews Jacob Siegel.
- David Rothkopf’s book, American Resistance, The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation. Rothhkopf acknowledges the reality that the United States is run by unelected bureaucrats, a group he calls The Deep State. In this book, he celebrates the men and women of the Deep State who “protected” our Constitution by violating it.
- The battle to control America’s mind: Washington is waging an information war, article on Unherd by DAVID SAMUELS. This article describes the “US government’s nascent efforts to wage information warfare against its own citizens.”
- Taking Down The Censorship Industrial Complex (CIC). Matt Taibbi, Russell Brand, and Michael Shellenberger are dismantling the CIC. Click on image below to find out how:
