---
title: The debate over counter-disinformation
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/
description: 'The arguments cover the whole toolkit: government contacts with platforms, platform removals and labels, academic monitoring, and state bodies such as…'
section: Learn
---

![Illustration: a dossier collage of a vintage television wall broadcasting archival news footage, surrounded by press clippings and film reels.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-watch-briefs.jpg)

[Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/) · Countering propaganda

# The debate over counter-disinformation

In brief

Since 2016 the effort to counter "disinformation" has itself been attacked from four directions: that the category is vague and its harms overstated, that it became government-steered censorship, that it hands states and platforms power over dissent, and that it does too little; court records settle some narrow facts, and most of the rest remains argued.

On this page

- [Background](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#background)
- [What was tried](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#what-was-tried)
- [Measured effects](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#measured-effects)
- [Null results, decay and critiques](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#null-results-decay-and-critiques)
- [Who uses it and who criticises it](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#who-uses-it-and-who-criticises-it)
- [What the evidence supports and doesn't](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#what-the-evidence-supports-and-doesn-t)
- [See also](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#see-also)
- [See also in Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#see-also-in-learn)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/debates/#sources)

On this page

**In one line:** since 2016 the effort to counter "disinformation" has itself been attacked from four directions: that the category is vague and its harms overstated, that it became government-steered censorship, that it hands states and platforms power over dissent, and that it does too little; court records settle some narrow facts, and most of the rest remains argued.

**Evidence:** mixed. Court records, company statements and studies establish specific facts (what officials sent platforms, what courts found, how concentrated exposure to false content is). They do not settle whether the contacts were censorship, or whether misinformation causes the harms attributed to it.

## Background

- **2016 to 2017: a new field.** On 24 November 2016 the *Washington Post* reported on a list by the anonymous group PropOrNot of more than 200 websites it said echoed Russian propaganda, including left-wing sites such as Naked Capitalism and Truthdig. After criticism from Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton of *The Intercept* and others, the *Post* added an editor's note saying it did not vouch for PropOrNot's findings about any individual outlet.
- **15 February 2020: the "infodemic."** At the Munich Security Conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We're not just fighting an epidemic; we're fighting an infodemic." WHO defined an infodemic as an over-abundance of information, some accurate and some not. In February 2021 Facebook added the claim that "COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured" to the health claims it removed.
- **2021 to 2026: a political and legal fight.** The Twitter Files (from December 2022), a House select subcommittee (from January 2023), and the *Missouri v. Biden* litigation (2022 to 2026) moved the argument into Congress and the courts.

![WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a meeting at the Munich Security Conference with USAID's Mark Green, February 2020](https://propagandaarchive.org/counter/images/counter-debates-tedros-msc-2020.jpg)

*Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, in a meeting with Mark Green of USAID at the Munich Security Conference, February 2020. Tedros gave his "infodemic" speech at the conference on 15 February 2020. Photo: Office of USAID Mark Green, public domain (U.S. government work), via Wikimedia Commons.*

## What was tried

The arguments cover the whole toolkit: government contacts with platforms, platform removals and labels, academic monitoring, and state bodies such as the [The State Department's Global Engagement Center (2016 to 2025)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/global-engagement-center/), the [The DHS Disinformation Governance Board (2022)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dhs-disinformation-governance-board/) and the [The UK's Counter Disinformation Unit and its sister units (2019 to 2024)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/uk-counter-disinformation-unit/). The methods are covered in [Fact-checking and corrections](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fact-checking/) and [Platform interventions: labels, nudges, notes, friction and takedowns](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/platform-interventions/).

**The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP)** was a 2020 coalition of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, Graphika and the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, about 120 people in all. Its final report, *The Long Fuse* (2 March 2021), says it flagged about 4,800 URLs about voting procedures and outcomes to platforms, and that 35 percent of those shared with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube "were either labeled, removed, or soft blocked."

**The Facebook lab-leak reversal.** On 26 May 2021, the day President Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to report on the virus's origins, Facebook's vice president of integrity Guy Rosen said: "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps." The ban had lasted nearly four months.

## Measured effects

| Record | Design | N / scope | Finding | Caveats |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Altay, Berriche and Acerbi (2023), *Social Media + Society* | Review | Literature | Six "misconceptions," including that falsehoods spread faster than truth and that engagement equals belief | Argument, not new data |
| Altay and Acerbi (2024), *New Media & Society* | See paper | See paper | Belief that misinformation is a threat is best predicted by the third-person effect: assuming others are gullible | Measures perception, not harm |
| Budak, Nyhan, Rothschild, Thorson and Watts (2024), *Nature* | Review | Literature | Exposure to false and inflammatory content is low and concentrated among a narrow fringe already seeking it | Review of existing studies; exposure is not the same as harm |
| Allen, Watts and Rand (2024), *Science* | Experiments plus machine learning | 18,725 in experiments; 13,206 URLs; about 233 million US Facebook users modeled | Unflagged vaccine-skeptical content had about 46 times the estimated effect on vaccine intentions of content flagged false by fact-checkers | Model estimate, not observed behavior |
| EIP, *The Long Fuse* (2021) | Self-report | About 4,800 URLs | 35 percent of URLs sent to five platforms were labeled, removed or soft blocked | The partnership's own count; does not show why platforms acted |

## Null results, decay and critiques

**The conceptual critique.** Joseph Bernstein, then a BuzzFeed News reporter, wrote the September 2021 *Harper's* cover essay "Bad News." He called the field that grew up "at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research" "Big Disinfo," and argued that it "presumes a harm model of content consumption," like smoking and cancer. Mike Masnick of *Techdirt* summarized its thesis: little evidence shows disinformation drives people to act as they otherwise would not. Sacha Altay and Alberto Acerbi argue that alarm about misinformation outruns its measured prevalence and that it is a symptom of deeper social problems.

**The answer from researchers.** Ullrich Ecker, Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, Naomi Oreskes, Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues replied in *Nature* (6 June 2024) that researchers "have come under attack and been labelled as unelected arbiters of truth," but that "the fight against misinformation is valid, warranted and urgently required." The Allen, Watts and Rand study cuts both ways: flagged misinformation mattered little, and misleading but unflagged content from mainstream sources mattered more.

**What was not measured.** No study measures what share of 2020 and 2021 removals was caused by government contacts rather than platforms' own policies, the causal link the Supreme Court found the plaintiffs had not shown.

## Who uses it and who criticises it

**Conservatives and libertarians: the censorship critique.** - *The Twitter Files.* From 2 December 2022, journalists given Twitter's internal records by its new owner, Elon Musk, published threads. Matt Taibbi's first thread reported that in 2020 requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were "received and honored," but said: "This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts." Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger wrote later installments. They also showed Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat, objecting to Twitter's blocking of the *New York Post*'s Hunter Biden laptop story. A January 2023 installment covered the [Hamilton 68: the Russian-influence dashboard and its secret account list](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/hamilton-68-dashboard/), quoting Twitter's Yoel Roth in 2018 that "real people" had been "labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse." - *Responses.* FBI agents and tech executives told CNN (23 December 2022) the government gave no order to suppress the laptop story. At a House Oversight hearing on 8 February 2023, Roth said "Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016," and Oversight Democrats said no witness testified that the government directed Twitter to act. Masnick has argued that the files were handed selectively to chosen journalists and produced misleading outrage, though in December 2022 he headlined one installment on the FBI as appearing to "reveal sketchy government behavior." - *The Weaponization subcommittee.* House Resolution 12 (January 2023) created this select subcommittee under Jim Jordan's Judiciary Committee. Taibbi and Shellenberger testified on 9 March 2023. Ranking member Stacey Plaskett called them "so-called journalists," which Taibbi rejected. A November 2023 staff report said CISA and the State Department's Global Engagement Center worked with Stanford to create the EIP "to censor Americans' speech," and published EIP tickets obtained from Stanford "under the threat of contempt of Congress." Stanford's March 2023 response said: "No, the EIP did not censor any tweets or label any tweets as 'misinformation.'" - *The Stanford wind-down.* In June 2024 Platformer and the *Washington Post* reported that the SIO was winding down: Alex Stamos had left, Renée DiResta's contract was not renewed, and it would not study the 2024 election. Stanford said "the important work of SIO continues under new leadership," and voiced concern about "lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry." - *Zuckerberg's letter.* On 26 August 2024 Mark Zuckerberg wrote to Jordan that in 2021 "senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire." He called this "wrong," adding: "Ultimately, it was our decision." The White House replied that it "encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety" while platforms made "independent choices."

**Missouri v. Biden in the courts.** - *4 July 2023.* Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.) issued a preliminary injunction. He wrote that the government appeared to assume "a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'" in what was arguably "the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history." - *8 September and 3 October 2023.* A unanimous Fifth Circuit panel held that the White House, the Surgeon General's office, the CDC and the FBI had likely "coerced" or "significantly encouraged" platforms, and narrowed the injunction to them. On rehearing it added CISA, finding that it "told the platforms whether certain election-related claims were true or false." The Knight First Amendment Institute called its reasoning "muddled." - *26 June 2024, Murthy v. Missouri.* The Supreme Court reversed, 6 to 3, on standing. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the Fifth Circuit relied on district court findings "many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous," that platforms had independent incentives to moderate, and that they had begun doing so before the challenged contacts. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, dissented, calling it "one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years." The Court did not decide where persuasion ends and coercion begins. - *23 March 2026, consent decree.* Under a new administration the parties settled, and later that week Doughty approved a decree barring the Surgeon General's office, the CDC and CISA for ten years from pressuring platforms to remove protected speech through legal, regulatory or economic threats, or from directing or vetoing moderation. It states that applying "labels such as 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' or 'malinformation' to speech does not render it constitutionally unprotected." NCLA, counsel for individual plaintiffs, called it historic. Public Knowledge said it "does nothing to combat illegal jawboning."

![Dated sequence of nine events from Facebook's May 2021 policy change to the March 2026 consent decree](https://propagandaarchive.org/counter/images/counter-debates-missouri-timeline.svg)

*The court steps in Missouri v. Biden and the company and official statements around them, as dated on this page. Drawn by FRAME from the court opinions and statements cited here; events are spaced evenly, not to scale. CC BY 4.0 (FRAME).*

![Official group portrait of the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 7 October 2022](https://propagandaarchive.org/counter/images/counter-debates-supreme-court-2022.jpg)

*The justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, official group portrait, 7 October 2022. In Murthy v. Missouri (26 June 2024) Justice Barrett wrote the opinion of the Court, and Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, dissented. Photo: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, public domain (work of a Court employee), via Wikimedia Commons.*

**Civil-liberties groups, the left and critics outside the United States.** - *Jawboning.* The EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology told the Supreme Court the government should bear the burden of showing its messages stayed within information, recommendation, education and criticism. After the ruling the EFF wrote that the Court had dodged the key question. The Cato Institute called for disclosure of government requests to platforms. The ACLU's David Cole argued *NRA v. Vullo* (2024) for the National Rifle Association, a case on the same line between persuasion and coercion. - *Platform power.* When Twitter permanently suspended Trump in January 2021, Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said limits on free expression should come "according to the law," "not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms." - *Left-wing outlets.* The World Socialist Web Site reported a 70 percent fall in its Google traffic after Google's April 2017 changes against "low-quality" content, and similar falls at other left sites; the *New York Times* could not confirm the declines at all of them. - *Abroad.* UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan (A/HRC/47/25, April 2021) found state and company responses "problematic, inadequate and detrimental to human rights." The Committee to Protect Journalists counted journalists jailed on "false news" charges at 28 in 2018, 30 in 2019 and 34 in 2020 (see [Laws against "fake news": Germany, France and Malaysia under one standard](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/fake-news-laws/) and [Government fact-check units: Russia, China, India and Ukraine](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/government-fact-check-units/)). Gabrielle Lim (Data & Society, 2020) described how Malaysia's government cited Western "fake news" coverage to pass its 2018 Anti-Fake News Act, and how the opposition answered that the government was the threat. Sophie Vériter (*International Affairs*, 2025) analyzes the EU's 2022 ban on RT and Sputnik as a "collective securitization" of disinformation. The Integrity Initiative, another contested project, is covered in [RICU and the Integrity Initiative: UK government-funded messaging that did not show its source](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/uk-ricu-integrity-initiative/).

**The "not enough" critique.** On 15 July 2021 Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory calling health misinformation an "urgent threat." The next day President Biden said of platforms, "They're killing people." On 19 July he said "Facebook isn't killing people," pointing to the Center for Countering Digital Hate's "Disinformation Dozen." Meta's Monika Bickert replied (18 August 2021) that those twelve drew about 0.05 percent of views of vaccine content on Facebook. Khan's report and the Ecker comment also argue that responses fall short.

## What the evidence supports and doesn't

- **Established by court records:** federal officials repeatedly contacted platforms in 2020 and 2021 about COVID-19 and election content. Two lower courts found likely coercion or significant encouragement at the preliminary stage. The Supreme Court reversed on standing, doubted many district court findings, and did not rule on the merits. The 2026 decree binds three agencies for ten years.
- **Established by company statements:** Facebook removed man-made-origin claims from February to May 2021. Meta's CEO says officials pressured the company and that the decisions were Meta's.
- **Established by studies:** exposure to outright false content is low and concentrated. Unflagged misleading content from mainstream sources can matter more than flagged falsehoods.
- **Still argued:** whether contacts with platforms amounted to censorship; whether research groups such as the EIP were a tool of government or independent scholars; whether "disinformation" is a usable category; and whether the net problem is too much counter-disinformation or too little.

## See also

- [Countering propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/countering/)
- [Fact-checking and corrections](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fact-checking/) and [Platform interventions: labels, nudges, notes, friction and takedowns](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/platform-interventions/): the methods under dispute.
- [The State Department's Global Engagement Center (2016 to 2025)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/global-engagement-center/), [The DHS Disinformation Governance Board (2022)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dhs-disinformation-governance-board/), [The UK's Counter Disinformation Unit and its sister units (2019 to 2024)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/uk-counter-disinformation-unit/): government bodies at the center of the argument.
- [Hamilton 68: the Russian-influence dashboard and its secret account list](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/hamilton-68-dashboard/): a monitoring tool criticized for its methods.
- [RICU and the Integrity Initiative: UK government-funded messaging that did not show its source](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/uk-ricu-integrity-initiative/): UK government-funded messaging, including the Foreign Office-funded Integrity Initiative, whose funding became public only after its files were leaked.
- [Government pressure on platforms and broadcasters ("jawboning"), 2020-2026](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/platform-moderation-jawboning/): the *Missouri v. Biden* record alongside the FCC and Jimmy Kimmel, and the EU and Brazilian actions against X.
- [Laws against "fake news": Germany, France and Malaysia under one standard](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/fake-news-laws/) and [Government fact-check units: Russia, China, India and Ukraine](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/government-fact-check-units/): counter-disinformation framing used by states against journalists and critics.

## See also in Learn

- [Motivated reasoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/motivated-reasoning/)
- [Moral outrage](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/moral-outrage/)

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus meeting Mark Green at the Munich Security Conference, February 2020 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Green_and_Tedros_Adhanom_Ghebreyesus_at_MSC_2020.jpg), Office of USAID Mark Green | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| The Missouri v. Biden sequence, 2021 to 2026 | Drawn by FRAME from this page's sources (`make_counter_debates_timeline.py`) | CC BY 4.0 (FRAME) |
| Justices of the Supreme Court, 7 October 2022 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States_-_Roberts_Court_2022.jpg), Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States | Public domain (work of a Court employee) |

### Image gaps

- **Portraits of Surgeon General Murthy and the district and circuit judges, and the court filings themselves.** Not hosted: no openly licensed copies were checked for this batch. The filings are US government records and are linked under Sources.
- **Twitter Files screenshots, *Harper's* cover, platform policy pages.** Copyrighted; not usable.

## Sources

- [Harper's: Joseph Bernstein, "Bad News" (September 2021)](https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/)
- [Techdirt: Most Information About Disinformation Is Misinformation (30 August 2021)](https://www.techdirt.com/2021/08/30/most-information-about-disinformation-is-misinformation/)
- [Altay, Berriche and Acerbi (2023), Misinformation on Misinformation, Social Media + Society](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051221150412)
- [Altay and Acerbi (2024), People believe misinformation is a threat because they assume others are gullible, New Media & Society](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231153379)
- [Acerbi: Why too much focus on online misinformation is a problem](https://acerbialberto.com/post/2023_focus_misinfo/)
- [Budak et al. (2024), Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation, Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07417-w)
- [Ecker et al. (2024), Misinformation poses a bigger threat to democracy than you might think, Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01587-3)
- [Allen, Watts and Rand (2024), Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook, Science](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3451)
- [Washingtonian: Washington Post appends editor's note to Russian propaganda story (December 2016)](https://washingtonian.com/2016/12/07/washington-post-appends-editors-note-russian-propaganda-story/); [CJR](https://www.cjr.org/criticism/washington_post_fake_news_russian_propaganda.php)
- [Munich Security Conference: speech by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (2020)](https://securityconference.org/en/publications/books/selected-key-speeches-volume-i/2020-2024/speech-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-2020/); [The Lancet: How to fight an infodemic](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30461-X/fulltext)
- [Platformer: Facebook's lab-leak reversal](https://platformer.substack.com/p/facebooks-lab-leak-reversal); [Fortune (27 May 2021)](https://fortune.com/2021/05/27/facebook-covid-19-man-made-ban-lift); [Business Standard](https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/facebook-reverses-policy-allows-posts-claiming-covid-was-made-in-a-lab-121052700144_1.html)
- [Center for an Informed Public: EIP final report (2 March 2021)](https://www.cip.uw.edu/2021/03/02/election-integrity-partnership-final-report-long-fuse/); [EIP report](https://www.eipartnership.net/report); [FIRE: One Weird Trick for Fixing Elections](https://www.fire.org/news/one-weird-trick-fixing-elections)
- [Stanford: Background on the SIO's Projects on Social Media (17 March 2023)](https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/HHRG-118-IF16-20230328-SD078.pdf)
- [Platformer: The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled (June 2024)](https://www.platformer.news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutdown-stamos-diresta-sio/); [Washington Post (14 June 2024)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/14/stanford-internet-observatory-disinformation-research-lawsuits-politics/); [GeekWire](https://www.geekwire.com/2024/uw-disinformation-researchers-will-continue-work-amid-reports-of-stanford-group-crisis/)
- [Matt Taibbi: Twitter Files thread 1 (2 December 2022)](https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-files); [Wikipedia: Twitter Files](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files) (orientation)
- [CNN: FBI agents, tech executives deny government ordered Twitter to suppress Hunter Biden story (23 December 2022)](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/politics/twitter-files-elon-musk-fbi-hunter-biden-laptop/index.html)
- [Techdirt: Finally! An Interesting Twitter Files That Appears To Reveal Sketchy Government Behavior (21 December 2022)](https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/21/finally-an-interesting-twitter-files-that-appears-to-reveal-sketchy-government-behavior/); [Techdirt Twitter Files tag](https://www.techdirt.com/tag/twitter-files/)
- [Scheerpost: Taibbi on Hamilton 68 (28 January 2023)](https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/28/matt-taibbi-move-over-jason-blair-meet-hamilton-68-the-new-king-of-media-fraud/)
- [Yoel Roth: statement to House Oversight (8 February 2023)](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Roth-House-Oversight-opening-statement-V4-Final.pdf); [Fortune coverage](https://fortune.com/2023/02/08/hunter-biden-laptop-twitter-executives-congress-yoel-roth-testimony/); [Oversight Democrats (9 February 2023)](https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/at-maga-led-hearing-committee-democrats-warn-of-ongoing-threats-to-democracy)
- [H.Res.12, 118th Congress](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/12)
- [Taibbi testimony (9 March 2023)](https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/taibbi-testimony.pdf); [Reason: Democrats deride the Twitter Files reporters as "so-called journalists"](https://reason.com/2023/03/10/twitter-files-hearing-weaponization-matt-taibbi-democrats-elon/)
- [House Judiciary staff report: The Weaponization of "Disinformation" Pseudo-Experts and Bureaucrats (6 November 2023)](https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/EIP_Jira_Ticket_Staff_Report_11-6-23_Clean.pdf); [press release](https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/new-report-details-how-federal-government-partnered-universities-censor)
- [CBC: Zuckerberg regrets some Facebook decisions on COVID-19 (August 2024)](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/facebook-us-congress-covid-1.7305796); [PBS NewsHour](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic)
- [Missouri v. Biden, W.D. La., memorandum ruling (4 July 2023)](https://ago.mo.gov/wp-content/uploads/missouri-v-biden-ruling.pdf?sfvrsn=dd807c2_2); [Law&Crime coverage](https://lawandcrime.com/first-amendment/orwellian-ministry-of-truth-trump-appointed-judge-smacks-down-biden-administrations-anti-disinformation-efforts/)
- [Missouri v. Biden, 5th Cir. (8 September 2023), Justia](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca5/23-30445/23-30445-2023-09-08.html); [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2023/09/08/1197971952/biden-administration-fifth-circuit-ruling-social-media-injunction); [NCLA on the 3 October 2023 rehearing](https://nclalegal.org/press_release/in-ncla-victory-fifth-circuit-expands-injunction-against-government-social-media-censorship/)
- [Knight First Amendment Institute: Persuasion or Coercion? The Fifth Circuit's Muddled View of Missouri v. Biden](https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/persuasion-or-coercion-the-fifth-circuits-muddled-view-of-missouri-v-biden)
- [Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. (26 June 2024), opinion](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf); [First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/murthy-v-missouri-2024/)
- [First Amendment Encyclopedia: Missouri v. Biden consent decree (2026)](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/missouri-v-biden-consent-decree-2026/); [consent decree (Exhibit A)](https://ago.mo.gov/wp-content/uploads/Ex-A-Fully-Executed-Consent-Decree.pdf); [NCLA](https://nclalegal.org/press_release/ncla-reaches-historic-settlement-strikes-major-blow-against-governments-social-media-censorship/); [Public Knowledge](https://publicknowledge.org/murthy-v-missouri-settlement-does-nothing-to-combat-illegal-jawboning/); [Lawfare](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-the-murthy-v.-missouri-and-daily-wire-consent-decrees-do-and-don-t-establish)
- [EFF: Supreme Court Dodges Key Question in Murthy v. Missouri (July 2024)](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/supreme-court-dodges-key-question-murthy-v-missouri-and-dismisses-case-failing); [Cato: SCOTUS jawboning decision and transparency](https://www.cato.org/blog/scotus-jawboning-decision-proof-why-we-need-transparency-government-demands-private-companies); [TechPolicy.Press: amicus briefs in Murthy and Vullo](https://www.techpolicy.press/doctrinal-disarray-amicus-briefs-in-murthy-v-missouri-and-nra-v-vullo-reveal-how-divided-legal-commentators-are-on-jawboning-questions/)
- [CNBC: Merkel hits out at Twitter over "problematic" Trump ban (11 January 2021)](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-twitter-over-problematic-trump-ban.html)
- [WSWS: New Google algorithm restricts access to left-wing, progressive web sites (27 July 2017)](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html); [WSWS on the New York Times report (October 2017)](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/02/goog-o02.html)
- [OHCHR: A/HRC/47/25, Disinformation and freedom of opinion and expression (2021)](https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc4725-disinformation-and-freedom-opinion-and-expression-report)
- [CPJ prison census 2018](https://cpj.org/reports/2018/12/journalists-jailed-imprisoned-turkey-china-egypt-saudi-arabia/), [2019](https://cpj.org/reports/2019/12/journalists-jailed-china-turkey-saudi-arabia-egypt/), [2020](https://cpj.org/reports/2020/12/record-number-journalists-jailed-imprisoned/)
- [Data & Society: Gabrielle Lim, Securitize/Counter-Securitize (2020)](https://datasociety.net/library/securitize-counter-securitize/)
- [Vériter (2025), The collective securitization of "disinformation" and the EU's ban on Russia Today and Sputnik, International Affairs](https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/101/5/1853/8227699)
- [CNBC: Surgeon general urges US to fight Covid misinformation (15 July 2021)](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/15/surgeon-general-urges-us-to-fight-against-covid-misinformation.html); [ABC News](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/surgeon-general-warns-misinformation-urgent-threat-public-health/story?id=78852002)
- [NBC News: "They're killing people" (16 July 2021)](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1274232); [CNN: Biden backs away from his claim (19 July 2021)](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/19/politics/joe-biden-facebook)
- [Meta: How We're Taking Action Against Vaccine Misinformation Superspreaders (18 August 2021)](https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/taking-action-against-vaccine-misinformation-superspreaders/)

## Related

- [Fact-checking and corrections](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fact-checking/)
- [Platform interventions: labels, nudges, notes, friction and takedowns](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/platform-interventions/)
- [Inoculation and prebunking](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/inoculation-and-prebunking/)
- [Media literacy](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/media-literacy/)
- [The State Department's Global Engagement Center (2016 to 2025)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/global-engagement-center/)
- [The DHS Disinformation Governance Board (2022)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/dhs-disinformation-governance-board/)
- [The UK's Counter Disinformation Unit and its sister units (2019 to 2024)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/uk-counter-disinformation-unit/)
- [Hamilton 68: the Russian-influence dashboard and its secret account list](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/hamilton-68-dashboard/)
- [RICU and the Integrity Initiative: UK government-funded messaging that did not show its source](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/uk-ricu-integrity-initiative/)
- [Government pressure on platforms and broadcasters ("jawboning"), 2020-2026](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/platform-moderation-jawboning/)
- [Laws against "fake news": Germany, France and Malaysia under one standard](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/fake-news-laws/)
- [Government fact-check units: Russia, China, India and Ukraine](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/government-fact-check-units/)