Robby Soave
Reason.com
8/25/2014
The federal government is sponsoring a creepy social media research project: The aim is to produce a database of politically disfavored tweets, misinformation, and “other social pollution.” The grant for the project—made by the National Science Foundation to Indiana University—was discovered by The Washington Free Beacon’s Elizabeth Harrington, who writes:
The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.
The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”
The university has received $919,917 so far for the project…
The article continues at Reason.com
Related: Government to Track ‘False, Misleading’ Ideas on Twitter
…One G-man’s “social pollution” is another free man’s First Amendment right. The very term sounds like something out of a 1920s Italian fascist tract. And why is the federal government even deciding which ideas are “false and misleading,” let alone tracking them?…
…It’s hard to denounce the more paranoid allegations of Obama’s opponents when his administration routinely goes beyond their wildest imaginings.
