Twitter Files: Government Funding Created ‘Cottage Industry’ of ‘Disinformation Labs’

Journalist and author Matt Taibbi noted the U.S. government’s role in creating a “new cottage industry” of “disinformation labs” ostensibly combatting fraudulent online propaganda in the interest of national security in his latest Twitter Files report published Thursday.

The “Twitter Files #17” thread focuses on the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a subsidiary of the State Department, and its claimed objective to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.”

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL), which is funded by the federal government via the GEC, regularly sent blacklists of online profiles to Twitter executives and staffers requesting censorship, according to the Twitter Files.