Truthy: The Tax-Funded Speech Monitoring and Suppression Project

5582_hLeftist speech suppressors are at it again, but this time they’re apparently being subsidized by the American taxpayer. On Monday, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent a letter to the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF), demanding information about the nearly $1 million spent on the “Truthy” data-mining project that monitors political speech on Twitter. “The committee and taxpayers deserve to know how NSF decided to award a large grant for a project that proposed to develop standards for online political speech and to apply those standards through development of a website that targeted conservative political comments,” Smith wrote to NSF Director France Cordova.

The letter continues:

While some have argued that Truthy could be used to better understand things like disaster communication or to assist law enforcement, instead it appears Truthy focused on examples of “false and misleading ideas, hate speech, and subversive propaganda” communicated by conservative groups.

Then comes the kicker that should infuriate Americans who believe in the First Amendment. “Whether by amazing coincidence or on purpose, it appears that several media accounts that were highlighted by Truthy were subsequently terminated by the owners of the social media platforms, effectively muzzling the political speeches of the targeted individuals and groups.”

Smith also references a book, The Death of the Internet, co-written by Filippo Menczer, professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University. Menczer is the project’s lead researcher. The book was released in 2012 and contains a chapter titled “Abuse of Social Media and Political Information,” in which Menczer notes that “Truthy was originally deployed in the run up to the 2010 US midterm elections with the explicit purpose of detecting and tracking political astroturfing attempts in real time.” According to Menczer, astroturfing is the employment of “deceptive tactics” that can be used to “gain a large numberers of followers and obtain a voice of importance within the community.”

For Menczer and his ilk, the idea that Americans should have the freedom to determine which messages are true or false is a bridge too far: he writes how he and his team managed to get Twitter accounts suspended.

The Washington Free Beacon reveals the original scope of the project, noting that “Truthy tracked up to 8 million tweets per day in the run up to the 2010 midterms, and stored 600,000 political tweets in their database.” Menczer denied that database’s existence. “The headlines are saying something that is completely false and fabricated,” he insisted. “We are not defining hate speech. We are not tracking people. We don’t have a database.”

The project began in 2011 at Indiana University following the awarding of $919,917 grant “aimed at modeling the diffusion of information online and empirically discriminating among models of mechanisms driving the spread of memes. We explore why some ideas cause viral explosions while others are quickly forgotten….Additionally, we will create a web service open to the public for monitoring trends, bursts, and suspicious memes. This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”

False and misleading idea, hate speech and subversive propaganda, according to whom? Menczer’s personal political activity shows support for radical leftist groups, including Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. And he has admitted that Truthy was inspired by the Twitter bombing campaign against Senate Democratic candidate Martha Coakley in 2010. Coakley lost that election.

Furthermore, in presentations to academic groups, Menczer has highlighted his research efforts focused on conservative groups, individuals and hashtags. Examples include the conservative Heritage Foundation’s use of #obamacare, pro-Sarah Palin tweets, and tweets using the hashtag “#tcot,” which stands for “Top Conservatives on Twitter.”

Menczer’s self-stated goal? To detect the dissemination of particular memes (transmitted cultural ideas, symbols, etc.) “early before damage is done–that is what we’re trying to do.” He also insists that while the project is non-partisan, “almost all of the most popular hashtags, the most active accounts, and the most tweeted URLs, are from the right. We looked really hard for any ‘truthy’ memes from the left.”

Columnist Michelle Malkin cuts right through that ridiculous assertion, citing the #StopRush smear campaign where a total of 10 Twitter users accounted for 70 percent of the campaign-related tweets to advertisers that were amplified by “illicit software.” And the Beacon cites two accounts Truthy got suspended. One was that of health insurance broker C. Steven Tucker, who used the hashtag “American Patriots,” or #ampat, and the other was @PeaceKaren_25, an account suspended after expressing support for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

Tellingly, this story has reached critical mass at the same time President Obama revealed he is intent on regulating the Internet, reclassifying it as a utility in order to bring it under the increasingly tighter yoke of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). “To put these protections in place, I’m asking the FCC to reclassify internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act,” Obama said in a statement released Nov. 10. “In plain English, I’m asking [the FCC] to recognize that for most Americans, the internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life.”

Obama and his followers also support “net neutrality,” which is the idea that every “packet” of information sent across the Internet be treated equally, regardless of source, destination, or content—with very limited exceptions made for illegal, malicious, or unwanted transmissions. The public utility model would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to wire up every house in the country irrespective of cost, with the FCC granted the power to set prices offsetting the additional regulatory burdens, and allowing the ISPs to make money.

In other words, the Internet would no longer be subject to market forces of supply and demand. Obama and his supporters ostensibly don’t want that to happen, but legal obstacles abound, the foremost of which should sound quite familiar to most Americans:

“In its proposed rules the FCC is essentially doing what can only be proposed by Congress: invent a new legal regime for broadband.”

Reason.com’s Grant Babcok reveals why the Obama administration is obsessed with getting more control over the Internet, noting that “the federal government is attempting to use the Internet to build a global Panopticon, capable of accessing everyone’s personal information at any time for any reason or no reason,” and that “securing the cooperation of private companies” is part of that effort. He explains the government bullying that would be necessary to obtain that cooperation has happened before during the financial crisis, when the Federal Reserve forced banks to take TARP money they didn’t want. “The threat to Internet freedom is government control,” he concludes. “That means that if you care about liberty, you should oppose Net neutrality and Title II reclassification.”

Despite all denials to the contrary, the objectives of Truthy and net neutrality—and let’s not forget the IRS’s targeting scandal as well—bear a striking resemblance to each other: suppression of speech on one end of the equation, buttressed by greater government control over one of the foremost engines of that speech dissemination on the other.

Tellingly, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has labeled net neutrality as “ObamaCare for the Internet.” That would be the same ObamaCare that relied on “the stupidity of the American voter” to secure its passage, according to MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, one of its chief architects.

Americans need to be very clear here: leftists like Menczer, Gruber and Obama, along with countless others who share their bankrupt ideology, have nothing but contempt for their fellow Americans. It is a contempt buttressed by unrelenting arrogance that drives all of them towards imposing ever-increasing amounts of government control over the “benighted” masses they see as fundamentally incapable of making rational decisions on their own.

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  • hitz

    Can book burning be far behind?

  • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

    We see here how dangerous government grants are. The idea of government funding research is popular, but government funding always leads to government control. These programs need massive cuts, which will have the secondary benefit of saving money.

  • quousque

    Another professor, another university but the purpose remains the same; pure, unadulterated control of the society.

  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    Where stories like this appear, the truth of Biblical Revelation of a set-up for a one world ruler cannot be too far behind !!

    • PerceiveToBeWise

      Aside whether Revelation was from “god” or not. In real terms, the end as forecast is not that hard to predict given people can be controlled and there will always one who will rise up from the masses to control them. Sheep need a shepard or so says the shepard. The sheep, they don’t know but know if they are afraid or not. Otherwise, they just chew on the grass happily. We are witnessing great control through religious zeal by Islamic terrorist who cite correctly the Quran for the inspiration as they blindly follow. Same is true of the topic of this article on Title II classification. Ideological left’s desire of control over others is as old as our species. Obama is not the anti-christ. He is an authoritarian the likes of which have been remembered in infamy throughout history. And his followers remind me of those who claim to see but do not perceive or hear but do not understand.

  • I_Am_Me

    The entire system is conspiring to collapse itself without even knowing it. The Leftwing echo chamber has grown beyond comprehension and the contagion is escalating.

    The only way this can continue is with your money.

  • AnneM040359

    Which, I predict is going to backfire on the libs BIGTIME.

  • PhillipGaley

    “the ‘benighted’ masses”?

    So, would “benighted masses” have something to do with: “Now that, the populace are now sufficiently dumbed down, why should they attempt independent ideas”?

  • cree

    All of what was created of and within America and its place among the nations of the planet, the greatness of its achievements, the vast quantity of its wealth_traded_creating higher standards of living around the planet, the benevolent good of its people, its defense against oppressive regimes, a military hegemony for balance of power ensuring free trade and peace rather than conquest and the inherent freedom of its people, is being diminished by the “transformation.” Why? Evil vs. good. Posterity inherits the future we leave them.

  • DavidG

    The biggest world threat are our 75% of Commie Jewish Americans out to get us 25% of real American Jews. I’m a huge Drop of Blood ” Jew” at 50% that nobody counts just like before and…Once Again. We protest their Commigougues where they hit,spit,shove and punch us every time and call us ” gentiles ” as their very worst name. They think they are better than everyone and are raving Antisemites like Stewart,Maher, DSW, Cantor,Cohen and the ” Women of the Wall”. It all starts with their females posing as real “Women ” being ” equal” which they clearly are not in many ways. Just look at all of their Uber sick ” women” leading the Commie/ Sharia charge and don’t ever date a Democrat women as nothing but Crazy Chicks..

  • Sheik Yerbouti

    It’s interesting to see these smaller efforts on the fringes of the big push. Something like this should have stayed in the shadows, but like most leftists they went way overboard once they saw Obama wasn’t wearing gloves. Now these cells will be turned out for all to see. Especially the ones run by white people (oddly enough).

    • Patriot077

      Good point. We haven’t seen much about Acorn and it’s new iterations. They are every bit as damaging to the fabric of America.

      • truebearing

        They are hiding behind new names. One of the old ACORN chapters is in Ferguson causing trouble.

        • Patriot077

          That does not surprise me one little bit. Not even a smidgeon!

  • truebearing

    “Truthy”…what an annoying name. Only a leftist would come up with a name like that.

    The Left is getting hammered because of the internet and they know they have to shut it down if they expect to have a monopoly on the media and the info it disseminates. Leftists can’t win debates when their lies can so quickly be revealed with internet searches. Stifling our ability to use free speech is their preferred method of winning debates.

    As detrimental as their inability to win the debate is, the fact that so many Americans are literally getting educated on conservative political websites creates a huge problem for the Left, who thought they had shut down learning in the public schools. Millions are becoming better informed by reading the articles and the comments on sites like Frontpage Magazine. Truth is not to be allowed by the Left, hence schemes like Truthy.

    • bigjulie

      Absolutely correct, tb! Truthy is indeed an irritating handle…Sounds like a chewing gum…Truthy Fruit! we’ll all have to watch extra-close in the next two years for shenanigans hidden in some high-sounding bill title like “Net Neutrality”!
      The Left is baffled by the shellacking they have taken, thanks in large part to the Internet and Conservative Talk Radio and the very clever and patriotic writers existing there. I’m not too worried though…people like David Horowitz, Daniel Greenfield, and the host of other excellent writers on FPM will always find an outlet somewhere, and any restriction on them will only cause the millions of avid readers they have to search even harder for the truths they purvey.

    • pfbonney

      “Millions are becoming better informed by reading the articles and the comments on sites like Frontpage Magazine.”

      Absolutely. I’ve finally started putting my Facebook account to good use. I not only share FPM articles that highlight exactly how the left accrues power, and what they hope to gain by each little (or big) thing they gain control over. And then, I comment on it (in the space provided), highlighting the offenses mentioned within.

      Then I have one-stop shopping for both myself and others.

      I’ve been doing this for only a month so far. I’ll probably get my account shut down by the left before anything comes of this effort, but, oh well.

  • Hank Rearden

    Liberalism has a big problem. Reality is conservative.

    Thus, every Liberal idea and the data to support them are untrue. As this untruth is uncovered,whether it be Obamacare, or women in combat, or the weaponization of the IRS, or whatever, Lib arbiters label the speech that uncovers Liberal lies “hate speech” for revealing that the world is not as they assert it to be.

    This professor is just another dangerous fraud.

  • Kathy A

    Stamp Out Trolls at http://www.stampouttrolls.com
    is proud to announce that 2 weeks ago we were asked by U.S. House
    Congressional Science Committee to help in an investigation of Twitter
    trolls, and so far the working arrangement has been very productive for
    all concerned. Also, see our video, but be prepared to be shock as to
    how deep this problem of Twitter trolls actually goes! You have no idea! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GjhLecLjmg

    • bigjulie

      Very powerful video presentation! This has got to stop. Unfortunately, only the Federal Government has the power to do so.

  • herb benty

    The big appeal of the Internet was it’s freeness, openess, all of mankind’s history, discoveries at your fingertips. Self-education made easy. Totalitarians must hate the Internet.

  • pupsncats

    How many other people, programs, grants, and dictators are out there that haven’t been exposed? It seems that our country is flooded with totalitarians.

  • Dan Knight

    Thank you Arnold for this addition to the ‘net neutrality’ ‘discussion.’

    Of course the Left has to find a way to suppress the truth. It’s the only way they have won, win, and can continue to win.

    • pfbonney

      Yes. I agree.

      Being control freaks, the Left obsesses over gaining power to control things for control’s sake, yet no one wants their brain-dead ideology. So they cannot win on the merits. They HAVE to suppress the truth.

      When all you have to make money off of is skunk scent, then you need to conceal its smell if you ever want to sell any.

      • Dan Knight

        LOL …