(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A shady State Department-funded censorship network exposed by Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk last year announced Monday that it will likely be closing by Dec. 23—an early Christmas present for online free-speech advocates.
That network, the Global Engagement Network, announced its impending closure in a Monday court filing. The State Department and GEC are facing a lawsuit from the Texas attorney general and several conservative media outlets for allegedly engaging in a conspiracy to censor American media outlets disfavored by the federal government.
This exact censorship nerve center I talked about on @joerogan last week, the State Department's Global Engagement Center, just filed a notice in court that they are "substantially likely" to shut down in 2 weeks https://t.co/yUBuzg61f5 pic.twitter.com/iODJhd1g1T
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) December 10, 2024
It’s unclear how the GEC’s closure will affect the lawsuit. Monday’s court filing said lawyers for all parties are still discussing the implications.
Musk put the GEC on the map in March 2023, when he deemed it to be the “worst offender in U.S. government” when it comes to censorship and media manipulation.
According to revelations from the “Twitter Files”—a trove of internal records about the censorship decisiosn made within the social media company—the GEC funded groups such as the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which in turn compiled blacklists of Twitter accounts that were supposedly tied to foreign disinformation campaigns. The Digital Forensic Research Lab sent those blacklists to Twitter so that the company could deactivate the accounts listed.
Federalist senior legal correspondent Margot Cleveland further revealed in April 2023 that the GEC marketed anti-conservative censorship products to private-sector tech firms. Cleveland also noted that the GEC apparently worked with infamous FBI Agent Elvis Chan, who was revealed in the Twitter Files to be in constant touch with the social media firm about censorship issues.
Despite those scandals, Democrats had been pushing to renew the GEC’s $100 million budget before it expires at the end of the year.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who drafted the original legislation in 2016 that led to the GEC, argued last year that the censorship network was crucial to counter foreign disinformation.
“There’s no way to combat Russian and Chinese misinformation without the GEC,” Murphy insisted.
Murphy and the other Democrats have apparently relented in the wake of Republicans sweeping into the House, Senate and White House.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
