Daily Wire, The Federalist and the State of Texas v US State Dept - Global Engagement Center (GEC) censorship

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The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and the state of Texas joined on Tuesday in a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, alleging that the government agency funded censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions.

The State Department is tasked with foreign relations and has no authority over domestic affairs, yet it took a government office designed for countering foreign terrorist propaganda, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), and unleashed it against Americans engaged in what it claimed was “disinformation,” according to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas on Tuesday night by the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
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Daily Wire And The Federalist Sue Biden State Department Over Censorship Effort | The Daily Wire

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... The lawsuit claims that GEC hid a $3‑million grant to a for‐profit organization known as Disinfo Cloud and Park Advisors that directly managed several of GEC’s initiatives. The State Department Inspector General discovered this grant, noted that GEC “funded and supported” Disinfo Cloud, and failed “to ensure contractors did not perform inherently governmental functions.”

Indeed, in GEC presentations, Disinfo Cloud is listed as a GEC initiative. Disinfo Cloud served as a repository for “over 365 tools and technologies” that would counter disinformation. Disinfo Cloud also managed other GEC initiatives, such as a technological testbed used to refine and improve tools that suppress disinformation. The GEC directly encouraged social media and other corporations to make use of the various tools, two of which are even more deeply entangled with the State Department, the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard.
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More:

https://www.cato.org/blog/another-lawsuit-alleges-more-government-censorship-proxy-state-departments-funds-blacklisting

The GDI was also discussed here:

Disinformation and censorship

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a British organization that evaluates news outlets' susceptibility to disinformation. The ultimate aim is to persuade online advertisers to blacklist dangerous publications and websites. ... GDI's recent report on disinformation notes that the...

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