WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) released documents from litigation against the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), exposing the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s internal “Disinformation Primer.”
Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), founded by Mike Benz, analyzed these documents and discovered that:
- The US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Center on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) created an internal “Disinformation Primer” that revealed the agency’s explicit praise for private sector censorship strategies and proposed additional censorship practices and techniques;
- USAID’s censorship proposals were aimed at influencing private-sector technology companies, media organizations, education ministries, national governments, and funding bodies;
- USAID endorsed “Advertiser Outreach” for the purpose of getting corporate advertisers to financially throttle disfavored media sources and social media accounts;
- USAID recommended Google’s Redirect Method and “prebunking” (i.e., psychological inoculation) as potential solutions to stop the erosion of traditional media influence over citizen hearts and minds;
- USAID proposed targeting gamers and gaming sites, pushing the need to censor their formation of “interpretations of the world that differ from ‘mainstream’ sources” and stopping them from “contributing their own research” to collectively form their own “populist expertise.”
AFL’s lawsuit against the State Department previously exposed how the Global Engagement Center (GEC) carries out state propaganda through willing participants from private media organizations. Read about it here on X.
AFL also released a bombshell X thread on the eleven “journalists” who decide what the American people get to see online based on documents from this lawsuit.
Read the full document here and FFO’s analysis here.
Follow us on social media for the latest updates on America First Legal’s fight to protect your constitutional rights!
To schedule an engagement with America First Legal, please email [email protected].
###
