(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Stanford University has made it clear that the Internet Observatory, a research group that has been accused of participating in social media censorship, is committed to its mission and will remain open.
Amidst the uncertainty, various news sources have been reporting conflicting information about the future of the observatory, with some suggesting its closure.
A recent report by the tech newsletter Platformer stated that the observatory may close after several key staffers, including founding director Alex Stamos, left or did not renew their contracts.
Other news sources reported that the observatory was “[collapsing] under pressure,” being “wound down” and “closing,” the College Fix reported. Some people on social media were also suggesting that the observatory was being permanently “shut down.”
Stanford, however, contradicted those reports in its recent statement on the observatory’s website.
“Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure. SIO does, however, face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted. As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership,” the statement said.
In addition, SIO will continue its “critical work” through the “publication of the Journal of Online Trust & Safety, the Trust & Safety Research Conference, and the Trust & Safety Teaching Consortium.”
In the statement, the university also announced that the observatory’s staff will be conducting research on “misinformation” during the 2024 election.
On its website, the observatory stated that it is a non-partisan, on-campus political research group that focuses on the misuse of social media, including issues related to elections and COVID-19 vaccine “misinformation.”
However, the observatory was criticized for participating in a joint project with the University of Washington called the Election Integrity Partnership during the 2020 and 2022 elections.
As expected, the university stated that the project’s purpose was to “defend our elections against those who seek to undermine them by exploiting weaknesses in the online information environment.”
In reality, the universities frequently collaborated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to censor “misinformation” from everyone who opposes the regime online.
In its recent statement, Stanford wrote that the SIO project would continue under new leadership and that it “remains deeply concerned” about congressional and legal efforts to “undermine” the legitimacy of “much-needed academic research” at universities across the country.
