Cease Government Funding of Counter-Misinformation Research and Activism: An Agenda for Policymakers

This blog is part of a series on technology innovation and free expression.

Misinformation is one of the most talked-about issues of our day. The World Economic Forum listed AI-powered misinformation and disinformation as the greatest threat currently facing the world. Academics, journalists, and politicians of various stripes decry the spread of misinformation and related terms like disinformation, misinformation, fake news, deep fakes, cheap fakes, etc.

False and misleading information can be harmful, but there is often no objective way to determine what is “harmful” or “misleading.” Indeed, one person’s core political speech might be viewed by another as the vilest and most scandalous conspiracy theory. While there are hard truths and falsehoods that can be proven by facts and logic, most of what we call misinformation is the cherry-picking of facts, the leaving out or emphasizing of certain details, half-truths, framing a topic in a certain way, or otherwise describing or opining on something in a way that some people might disagree with but isn’t provably false. 

In other words, nearly every piece of journalism, academic research, and conversation could be classified as misinformation if the only subjective standard is that someone views it as misleading. 

Thankfully, the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to discuss and figure out the truth themselves. The government cannot be the arbiter of truth, and it cannot silence opinions and arguments that it considers wrong. But that has not stopped it from trying. In recent years, the government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to research and combat misinformation. A recent survey of government grants conservatively found the government handed out at least $267 million in counter-misinformation grants during the Biden administration. As might be expected with such a subjective problem, these grants often took sides in politically contentious issues, labeling the views of their ideological opponents as misinformation. To list just a few examples:

• A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to Co-Insights to combat “common misinformation narratives,” including “fearmongering and anti-Black narratives, undermining trust in mainstream media, and glorifying vigilantism.” 

• Another NSF grant to George Washington University to counter “populist politicians,” “populist narratives,” and their policies regarding pandemics and beyond.

• The State Department funded the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization that labeled American and international media organizations as purveyors of misinformation. It consistently targeted conservative, libertarian, or otherwise heterodox news organizations, accusing them of being biased or holding views that are disfavored by progressives. These labels attempted to convince other companies not to advertise with such spreaders of misinformation. 

Given the subjectivity inherent in the study and combating of misinformation, policymakers should cut off government funding to research, label, combat, or otherwise counter misinformation, disinformation, mal-information, and any similar term. This is not to say that the private sector and academics cannot continue researching misinformation. But the government simply cannot be unbiased, and funding will invariably continue to be weaponized to denigrate and suppress the viewpoints of the government’s opponents. This threat is true regardless of political party and regardless of whether the issue is abortion, COVID-19, election integrity, racism, the environment, policies around sex and gender identity, or countless others. The government must cease using taxpayer dollars to attack Americans’ speech.