Govt Communication With Social Media Is Not Censorship

Michel Martin, Contributor: Thanks Bianna, Nina Jankowicz, thank you so much for talking with us once again.

Nina Jankowicz, Fmr. Leader, Disinformation Governance Board: Thanks for having me.

MM: You were the head of something called a, the Disinformation Governance Board. Could you just remind us of what this board was meant to do?

NJ: Sure. This was an in intra-agency policy group at the Department of Homeland Security coordinating or meaning to coordinate the best practices across the department to really respond to disinformation. Of course, that board never got off the ground because there were a lot of conspiracy theories coming mostly from the American right, that said that the board was going to be engaging in censorship that had no basis in reality. I would not have taken a job that had anything to do with that. And as a result, what we’re seeing today with many of the things that are attacking disinformation researchers that, that really all stemmed in my opinion, from the beginning of that campaign against the board.

MM: So you were the target of a disinformation campaign for being part of an intra-agency working group that was trying to address disinformation.

NJ: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s very ironic, but I also think in a lot of ways it makes me better for the work that I do. I had always, you know, studied this. I had seen the human effects on it on other people, but now having been the recipient of threats and harassment for the past year, plus, I know that these campaigns have a real human effect.

MM: I was gonna ask you about that. To the degree that you feel comfortable, would you mind talking about some of the, the effects of this if you could just talk a little bit about what some of the fallout has been for you and for your family.

NJ: Yeah, I mean, it’s been a really difficult year and I have to the extent possible, tried to speak up as much as I can about it, because I think it’s important to underline again that I’m not just a caricature on the internet. I’m a woman who has a family, and this has had an enormous impact on my family. I have had a stalker against whom I’ve had to take out a protective order. I’ve been named in frivolous lawsuits that have cost me tens of thousands of dollars to dismiss. I’ve taken, you know, probably about a hundred hours dealing with Congressional committees, Jim Jordan’s weaponization of government committee, which subpoenaed me to testify before them in a closed door hearing about my activities with the board. It has really taken away from, from my ability to do substantive work in the national security field, but it also has been an enormous burden on my family in terms of our security. It’s never gonna be the same. We still receive violent threats pretty regularly. And as a result of all this, I just, I decided that, you know what, I’m not gonna stand for it. And I, I decided to file a suit against Fox News for their defamation of me, which in my opinion, led to a lot of the threats and harassment that my family has received.

MM: Well talk a little bit about that, if you would. What is the, what is the what is the argument of this, this defamation suit, which I think you filed in May what, what is the underlying allegation or – in the complaint?

NJ: Sure. So, across Fox News programs for many months after I resigned, Fox News personalities lied about me and my body of work. They lied about statements that I was alleged to have made and did absolutely no fact checking where, where they could have proved that. I did not – indeed not say those things. And they lied about me being fired when in fact, I resigned and lied about my intention in joining the government. And again, this has led people to make allegations against me like I committed treason, like I, you know, was going against the US Constitution, that have led to things like this stalker that have led to enormous professional consequences for me as well. And that’s exactly what many of the Republicans are trying to do in attacking researchers and government employees who are trying to do the same thing that I did, standing up for democracy and standing up for the truth.

MM: So they make you controversial and then that becomes an excuse for people to make you untouchable because you’re controversial, even though controversy is invented to begin with.

NJ: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. And I’m happy to say, you know, I’ve risen above that and I’ve been surrounded by great family and friends and colleagues who have stood by me during all of this. But I think for a lot of people, it would be much easier to throw in the towel and say, why research this stuff? I’m just gonna go live in the woods somewhere. And I’m determined not to let that happen. But I think for a lot of people that might just be a bridge too far. And certainly for civil servants who might be on the other end of lawsuits and, and investigations like this, they don’t wanna risk their career. They don’t wanna risk their livelihood. They don’t wanna risk their family’s safety in order to do this work. And that’s, that’s the calculation.

MM: As we said, you filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox in May. And last month, Fox News filed a motion to dismiss your lawsuit stating that quote “hosts and guests on Fox exercise their first Amendment rights to join the public debate and voice their opinions and predictions that the board and plaintiff would police speech, be arbiters of truth and thereby censor speech.” So in the spirit of fairness, that’s, that’s their comment. They called it a they called the lawsuit, a broadside attack on Bedrock First Amendment principles. I mean, you know, we’re not gonna argue that here, and that’s what courts are for. So let me turn to the, the reason we ask you to join us today, a news event. Last week, a federal judge imposed an injunction on the Biden administration restricting its ability to work with social media companies encountering online conspiracy theories. And it names specific individuals that they say cannot meet with the social media companies. And in fact, we know for a fact that at least one high level consultation was canceled as a result of this. Could you just talk a little bit about, you know, your knowledge about what led up to this injunction?

NJ: Sure. Well, I think, as I mentioned before, this is part of a broader campaign to intimidate disinformation research and counter disinformation work in the federal government and in government adjacent areas, the public sector, research institutions ahead of the 2024 election. I actually was named in the lawsuit in my official capacity when it was first filed last May, in May, 2022. And I was removed after I resigned. However I was included on the basis of those false conspiracy theories about the board, that the board was meant to censor Americans. And the fact that I was included, I think, speaks to the absurdity and the lack of substance behind this lawsuit. This lawsuit would have everyone believe that any cooperation, any communication between social media platforms and the government amounts to censorship. But that is just not true. What the government is doing, in many cases when it is flagging content, is flagging content that is already violative of social media companies terms of service. We might like to think they are free speech zones, but we all sign up to rules when we sign up for the social media companies’ websites. And those might be rules against disinformation. They might be rules against hate speech, child trafficking, sexual abuse material, what have you. We sign up to those rules and the government then, if they find instances of violative content, they send it to the social media companies. The social media companies are under no burden to actually act on, on those requests. And in many cases, based on a study conducted by Stanford University, in about 35% of those cases, they took action. The other 65%, they didn’t do anything. And a lot of times the action that they did take was just adding context, not removing the content itself. So I think, again, we have to understand that communicating between the government and social media companies does not amount to censorship. And frankly, the government has a right to communicate about its policies and a duty to protect the nation, to protect our democratic infrastructure, to protect public health and public safety. And sometimes that amounts to law enforcement agencies speaking to social media platforms and saying, Hey, we see a problem on your website here.

MM: Is there, is there an analogy you could draw for people who might not understand what kinds of conversations are being had because I think a lot of people might say, well, gee, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of the government jawboning these companies to tell them kind of what to do. So is there an analogy that you could draw that might make sense to the average citizen?

NJ: Absolutely. I can give you a concrete example from the 2020 election. So in 2020, when the Russian government realized it had to kind of change how it was doing its messaging and influence operations in the United States ahead of the election, because we all got a little bit more aware, right? That this sort of thing was happening, what they decided to do was hire American journalists who were totally unwitting to write stories that were critical of the US government. And they, they filed them under this outlet called Peace Data, the FBI found out about this. And they tipped off Twitter and Facebook and said, Hey, we’ve got the internet research agency that infamous Russian troll farm. They are paying American journalists to do this sort of influence operation. We think this might go against your terms of service in terms of election interference. And that operation was really diffused before it got off the ground. And that was a good thing for our elections. Now, the judge in this case has made some exceptions for what he says are election interference and other criminal activities. But here’s my worry, knowing how government works, having been in government for a bit myself, civil servants on the other end of this injunction, finding something like the Peace Data operation will either have to jump through a ton of hoops to make contact with the social media companies, thereby slowing it down when we don’t have time to waste in a contentious election cycle, or they just won’t make that contact at all. Because as I said, the possibility that they might get hit with a lawsuit or an investigation or become the apex of a harassment campaign, I mean, those are really heavy things to weigh for working level individuals. And so this is really putting the brakes on a lot of important work that’s gonna be happening, in the name of truth, ahead of the 2024 election.

MM: The injunction also prohibits government agencies from collaborating with something called the Election Integrity Partnership, and that’s an alliance of researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington. Why are they named in the lawsuit?

NJ: Well these particular research organizations have been in the nexus of a lot of conspiracy theorists for also quote unquote “engaging in censorship.” Wh when all they do is engage in open source research again, sometimes flagging up to the social media companies, content that might be violative or content that might dissuade people from going to vote content that might tell them different or incorrect information about when to vote all stuff that we should not want on the internet, right? And yet they have come in the crosshairs of, of many on the far right in particular because they call out the disinformation coming from that side of the political spectrum. And, and frankly, there’s disinformation coming from all sides of the political spectrum, and I would call them pretty equal opportunity in calling that all out. But there are certain people in our political class right now who don’t want any scrutiny on them. And the University of Washington, Stanford, these brilliant researchers there who I might add, they’re led by in most part women. And I don’t think it’s coincidence that they’re being called out. These women are, are doing really important work for our democracy. And the idea there in calling them out in this injunction is to make sure that, again, they’re made toxic, that their funding dries up, that they’re drowning in paperwork, and they’re not able to collaborate with government institutions and other institutions in this space in order to do this important work.

MM: What I’m curious about though is that you’ve said that look, disinformation has, you know, even by the same foreign actors like the Russians, disinformation was directed at both sides of the political spectrum. So if, if people on both sides could be attacked in this way, what’s good about it? Why does this, why isn’t there a shared social interest in addressing this in a constructive way? I guess that’s what I’m, what I’m confused by.

NJ: I’m confused by it too, Michel. I mean, I have said in every congressional testimony I’ve done, including in the deposition that I did in April, that, you know, this doesn’t benefit anybody. It is un-American and frankly, disinformation doesn’t know a political party. Ultimately, the victim is our democracy. But I think what motivates the people who are seeking to undermine, to silence, to intimidate people like me, people like my former colleagues in government, people like my colleagues at at Stanford and the University of Washington, is that it really gets them popular support when they have an enemy to mobilize against. And I know very, very intimately what that is like on a personal level. And again, there’s just no regard for, for individuals humanity here, because it scores them political points, it plays really well with the base and it shores up their power for the next election cycle. And I think that is, again, a really frightening prospect for the United States as we head into this election season.

MM: I do wanna mention that the administration, the Biden administration has appealed the judge’s decision this injunction, // but what are you most worried about going forward?

NJ: Well, the legal system takes a long time, right? So I think it’s possible that this preliminary injunction will be upheld while the judge in the Fifth Circuit decides whether or not to narrow the scope of the injunction to overturn it all together or to uphold it. And as that happens, we’re getting closer and closer to the election. But more broadly, I’m, I’m really worried about the discourse and the country, again, that individuals are being villainized for doing their jobs for, you know, pursuing academic research in some cases. And I’m worried that there are gonna be people who are dissuaded, particularly, you know, women, particularly people of color who are gonna be dissuaded from public service, who are gonna be dissuaded from pursuing careers in public life because of this weaponization of hatred, the politicization of, of, you know, basic facts that can come for anybody at any time. And I think that’s really bad for our democracy. We should want, you know, a discourse and a government that is broadly representative of the population and that, you know, represents mostly diverse views. And instead, what we’re seeing is really a, a quashing of any sort of critique and, and dissent and people who are having to make really difficult calculations about their safety and the safety of their loved ones simply for doing their job.

MM: And of course, there are people who on the right, who believe that that is being done to them. I mean, they believe that they’re being kind of vilified and demonized and – for expressing their sincerely held beliefs about things like gender, for example, or about what books should be taught and so forth. How do you, you know, reconcile that, you know?

NJ: Well, I always, I always say that we shouldn’t endorse that sort of behavior no matter who is, is expressing themself, no matter what political opinion people have. I wouldn’t want anyone on the left or the right to have to go through what me and my family have gone through. And I, I really sincerely mean that. I think we all need to, to tone it down a little bit and to recognize that there are ways to have these conversations about those deeply and truly held beliefs without making threats, without, you know, just slinging vitriol. That’s not what America is supposed to be about. And ultimately, I do believe that our elected officials and government officials have a responsibility to set the tenor of that discourse. And too often lately, we have seen our elected officials setting the discourse in a very worrisome direction.

MM: You’ve described a very disturbing set of circumstances and potential threats. Is there, is there anything giving you hope in this moment?

NJ: I intend to keep doing this work, and I know many of my colleagues in this sphere feel the same way. This is too important to throw in the towel on. And I’m not sure how things could get worse. So we all hope that they’re gonna be better, and we intend to keep speaking our truth, to keep doing the research and showing our work that, that shows how these disinformation campaigns work and to attempt to put the pieces back together. Unfortunately, government kind of has its hands tied right now, and we’re seeing social media companies rolling back their policies with regard to the US election, but civil society and activists in the United States have always been a, a force to be reckoned with. So between between the civil society folks and the journalists, I think we can continue to uphold the truth now and, and in the years to come.

MM: And Nina Jankowicz, thanks so much for talking with us once again.

NJ: Always a pleasure.