The future of the Stanford Internet Observatory is uncertain: NPR

Alex Stamos, the former director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, during his testimony before Congress in 2014. The research team led by Stamos came under criticism from Republicans, who claimed their research amounted to censorship.

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The Stanford Internet Observatory, a renowned research group at Stanford University that studies the misuse of social media platforms, has lost its leadership and faces an uncertain future amid an ongoing right-wing campaign against the study of falsehoods on the internet.

SIO’s founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November, and in recent weeks the university did not renew the contract of Renée DiResta, the group’s research director, as well as other staff members. The remaining staff members have been told to look for other jobs, according to tech newsletter Platformer, which first reported the news.

The SIO was founded five years ago as a multidisciplinary program to address some of the most sensitive issues raised by the proliferation of the internet, including the way social networks like Instagram are being used to exploit children and how false and misleading information about elections and vaccines is being spread.

But last year, the work of researchers at the SIO and other institutions studying viral falsehoods and their impact on democracy came under scrutiny from Republican judiciary and Congress, who accused them of censorship.

The Election Integrity Partnership, a joint project between SIO and the University of Washington to track down false and misleading information about the 2020 and 2022 elections, has become the focus of conspiracy theories alleging that it is a cover for the government to suppress unwelcome speech.

As a result, researchers at Stanford, the University of Washington, and other institutions have faced lawsuits, been inundated with subpoenas and document requests, and have been harassed and attacked online.

This results in legal fees running into the millions and a significant amount of time being spent responding to congressional inquiries and lawsuits, which researchers say distracts them from their actual work. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the SIO was struggling to raise money to continue funding its work in an increasingly hostile climate.

Responding to news of the SIO’s withdrawal, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee led efforts to discredit researchers, posted on X on Friday: “Free speech wins again!” and accused the SIO of being part of the “censorship regime.”

Stanford University opposed the idea of ​​abolishing SIO.

“The important work of the SIO will continue under new leadership, including its important work on child safety and other online dangers, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, the Trust and Safety Research Conference, and the Trust and Safety Teaching Consortium,” university spokeswoman Dee Mostofi said in a statement. “Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that restrict academic freedom and undermine legitimate and much-needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia.”

SIO employees, including Stamos and DiResta, have been targeted by Jordan’s subcommittee on arming the federal government, which alleges that government agencies, technology companies and academics conspired to unconstitutionally suppress conservative speech — a claim the defendants deny. In addition, Stamos and DiResta are named in an ongoing private lawsuit filed by America First Legal, an organization led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

The SIO and other academic research groups were also initially named in a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration, making similar allegations of collusion. The researchers have since been disqualified from that case, which the Supreme Court is expected to rule on in the coming weeks.

“The politically motivated attacks on our election and vaccine research are baseless, and the attempts by partisan House committee chairs to suppress First Amendment-protected research are a prime example of the weaponization of government,” Stamos and DiResta said in a statement first sent to Platformer.

“We are grateful to Stanford for defending our work, including before the U.S. Supreme Court, and are confident that the justice system will ultimately take action to protect our free speech and the free speech of other scientists,” they wrote. “We hope Stanford is willing to support the rest of the SIO team and serve as a safe space for future research on how the Internet is used to harm individuals and our democracy.”