The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the “smoking gun” of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.

As professor Kate Starbird notes, the Intercept article makes out like this was some nefarious secret meeting when it was actually a publicly announced meeting with public minutes, and part of the discussion was even on where the guardrails should be for the government so that it doesn’t go too far. Indeed, even though the public output of this meeting is available directly on the CISA website for anyone to download, The Intercept published a blurry draft version, making it seem more secret and nefarious. (Updated: to note that not all of the meeting minutes published by The Intercept were public: they include a couple of extra subcommittee minutes that are not on the CISA website, but which have nothing particularly of substance, and certainly nothing that supports the claims in the article. And all of the claims here stand: the committee is public, their meeting minutes are public, including summaries of the subcommittee efforts, even if not all the full subcommittee meeting minutes are public).

It includes four specific recommendations for how to deal with mis- and disinformation and none of them involve suppressing it. They all seem to be about responding to and countering such information by things like “broad public awareness campaigns,” “enhancing information literacy,” “providing informational resources,” “providing education frameworks,” “boosting authoritative sources,” and “rapid communication.” See a pattern? All of this is about providing information, which makes sense. Nothing about suppressing.

Alexios Mantzarlis, the founding director of the International Fact-Checking Network, worked closely with Meta as the company set up its partnerships. He took exception on Tuesday to Zuckerberg's statement that "the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US." What Zuckerberg called bias is a reflection of the fact that the right shares more misinformation from the left, said Mantzarlis, now the director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech. "He chose to ignore research that shows that politically asymmetric interventions against misinformation can result from politically asymmetric sharing of misinformation," Mantzarlis said. "He chose to ignore that a large chunk of the content fact-checkers are flagging is likely not political in nature, but low-quality spammy clickbait that his platforms have commodified. He chose to ignore research that shows Community Notes users are very much motivated by partisan motives and tend to over-target their political opponents."

while Community Notes has shown some promise on X, a former Twitter executive reminded me today that volunteer content moderation has its limits. Community Notes rarely appear on content outside the United States, and often take longer to appear on viral posts than traditional fact checks. There is also little to no empirical evidence that Community Notes are effective at harm reduction. Another wrinkle: many Community Notes currently cite as evidence fact-checks created by the fact-checking organizations that Meta just canceled all funding for.

What Zuckerberg is saying is that it will now be up to users to do what automated systems were doing before — a giant step backward for a person who prides himself on having among the world's most advanced AI systems.

"I can't tell you how much harm comes from non-illegal but harmful content," a longtime former trust and safety employee at the company told me. The classifiers that the company is now switching off meaningfully reduced the spread of hate movements on Meta's platforms, they said. "This is not the climate change debate, or pro-life vs. pro-choice. This is degrading, horrible content that leads to violence and that has the intent to harm other people."

increasingly, a broad collection of conspiracy groups, extremist movements, political and commercial interests, and at times hostile states, coalesce around crises to further their agendas through online falsehoods, division and hate. They exploit social media moderation failures, gaming their algorithmic systems, and often produce dangerous real-world effects.

Some of the largest accounts sharing falsehoods about the hurricane response – including those with more than 2 million followers – have actively engaged with other forms of mis- and disinformation and hate. This includes anti-migrant conspiracies, false claims of electoral fraud, and antisemitic discourse around the so-called ‘Great Replacement.’ Their role as amplifiers here reveals how diverse groups converge on moments of crisis to co-opt the news cycle and launder their positions to a wider or mainstream audience.

Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government – this includes calls to send militias to face down FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals would “shoot” FEMA officials and the agency’s emergency responders.

Boreing said: "your story is inaccurate to the point of being false," though he did not specify a single inaccuracy, nor did he deny that the Daily Wire had sought and obtained a gag order on Owens at the same time they were publicly posturing as wanting a debate with her. The confirmation we obtained of all these facts is indisputable. Boreing added: "I’m sure you can appreciate how fraught a high profile break-up like this is. For that reason, we are trying to resolve our issues with Candace privately."It certainly seems true that the Daily Wire is attempting to achieve all of this "privately." Nonetheless, Ben Shapiro has constructed his very lucrative media brand and persona based on his supposed superiority in debating, a reputation cultivated largely as a result of numerous appearances at undergraduate schools around the country where he intrepidly engages with students who are often in their teens or early twenties. Both Shapiro and the Daily Wire have also predicated their collective media brand on an eagerness to engage in free and open debate with anyone, and to vehemently oppose any efforts to silence people, especially those in media, from expressing their political views.