When a report goes viral in the news cycle, it only makes sense to question where it came from – especially if that report has influence all the way up to the Oval Office, affecting public health policy, while also having dangerous implications for free speech.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, most likely seen in your news feed as CCDH, released a bombshell report earlier this week. It was picked up everywhere and had the following revelation:
The majority of COVID misinformation came from just 12 people.
“CCDH, a UK/US non-profit and non-governmental organization, found in March that these 12 online personalities they dubbed the ‘disinformation dozen’ have a combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms, with Facebook having the largest impact. CCDH analyzed 812,000 Facebook posts and tweets and found 65% came from the disinformation dozen. Vivek Murthy, US surgeon general, and Joe Biden focused on misinformation around vaccines…as a driving force of the virus spreading,” The Guardian Reports.
But could this be a wily gambit by outside interests to justify the Biden administration’s censorship partner-up with Big Tech?
According to The Federalist, “The Center for Countering Digital Hate is an obscure international group reportedly based out of the United Kingdom and Washington, D.C., that works as an adviser to multiple governments and elite-run institutions about digital technology and regulation. According to its website, the left-wing Center for Countering Digital Hate prides itself on researching, exposing, and then shutting down users and news sites it deems unacceptable in the digital sphere.”
Users and news sites it deems unacceptable? That seems potentially dangerous, considering we know very little about the CCDH.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) expressed his concerns on Twitter with the following post: “Who is funding this overseas dark money group – Big Tech? Billionaire activists? Foreign governments? We have no idea. Americans deserve to know what foreign interests are attempting to influence American democracy.”
And he isn’t the only Senator who is worried about the implications of the report.
According to Fox News, “Sen. Marsha Blackburn wrote a letter to President Biden slamming his administration’s collaboration with Facebook to rid the platform of vaccine“misinformation” and suggesting the work could violate the First Amendment.
“These revelations are deeply concerning,” the Tennessee Republican wrote in a letter Friday obtained by Fox News. “The blatant actions by your administration to work with Big Tech companies to censor Americans’ free speech are shocking – and arguably a violation of the First Amendment.”
So, the CCDH is an authority on speech and information. No one knows who funds them. No one knows who is driving their research. But their findings are being used in censorship efforts under the guise of controlling misinformation?
Critics of the Biden administration are likely to keep digging until their questions are answered.
