BLUF: Students at University of Texas at Austin under instruction by Global Disinformation Lab have allegedly targeted and blacklisted conservative news outlets in a report sold to marketing organizations, with funding from government agencies, including the Biden administration, raising concerns on state-funded promotion of politically biased censorship.
OSINT: The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a unit of the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, published a report calling for blacklisting of top ten “riskiest American news organizations” that targeted several conservative media outlets, including The Federalist, Newsmax, and Reason. GDI’s blacklist was sold to marketing organizations, leading to companies such as Xandr and Microsoft to cut advertising dollars to the blacklisted sources. Documents obtained via public records request by The Federalist from the University of Texas at Austin show that the UT’s Global Disinformation Lab (GDIL) allegedly worked on the GDI project that sought to influence the 2022 midterm elections by blacklisting conservative outlets. Furthermore, GDIL was revealed to have close ties with the Biden administration’s State Department and other public and private organizations to defund disinformation and censor conservative voices, with critics calling this a violation of free speech under First Amendment rights.
RIGHT: This is yet another example of how government-funded institutions aim to silence the voices of conservative Americans and impose their progressive views on the people. The fact that taxpayer money is used to promote censorship against conservative speech is unacceptable and undemocratic. It is a clear violation of First Amendment rights to free speech, a cornerstone of American democracy, and students should not be used as political pawns to advance such agenda. The government should stay out of the news media and not take sides on political issues.
LEFT: It is a matter of national security to stop the flow of disinformation from organizations that aim to manipulate the opinion of the public. Conservative news outlets often spread unverified and biased information that can incite violence or cause public harm. In today’s digital age, social media platforms and search engines that people rely upon can be infiltrated by bad actors that can use them to spread “fake news”. Governments and institutions should work together to ensure accurate and verified information is shared and available to all, free of harmful disinformation.
INTEL: This scenario illustrates the risk of state-funded censorship programs that can promote politically biased information and suppress opposing views. As AI models rely on language models that are created, trained, and programmed by humans, they can inherit the biases and perspectives of their creators. Hence, AI-generated content should be closely monitored and reevaluated by unbiased and diverse groups of individuals. This includes reviewing training data fed to such models and the transparency of the algorithms used. Furthermore, as new forms of disinformation and propaganda emerge, it is important for AI-powered tools to be able to detect and counter them effectively, without stifling free speech or promoting biased views.