I'm not aware of any agency with the authority to do so.
One could argue that the changes require that the material be originally intended for foreign consumption, but how does one prove "intent?"
https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/oversight/legislation/smith...
It remains strictly forbidden to use government funds to influence public opinion in the United States.
https://listverse.com/2015/12/17/10-hollywood-movie-scripts-...
https://ageoftransformation.org/exclusive-documents-expose-h...
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hollywood-cia-washingto...
> Files we obtained, mainly through the US Freedom of Information Act, show that between 1911 and 2017, more than 800 feature films received support from the US Government’s Department of Defence (DoD), a significantly higher figure than previous estimates indicate. These included blockbuster franchises such as Transformers, Iron Man, and The Terminator.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/oscars-military-hollywood/
> This partnership comes at a price. In exchange for the use of military personnel and equipment, movie producers must abide by the Pentagon’s strict entertainment policy that grants the DoD final say over a movie’s script. These collaborations frequently require changes to the screenplay that amount to historical revisionism. Spy Culture, the “world's leading resource on government involvement in Hollywood,” has utilized FOIA requests to collect tens of thousands of annotated drafts of film scripts which provide a firsthand glimpse at the breadth of the Pentagon’s influence over the movies we know and love.
They're building the Ministry of Truth.
If you need an AI and propaganda to convince someone instead of neutral, rational, and educational means - then guess what, you are in the wrong.
To be honest, it's been going on for effectively forever.
See operation mockingbird -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
If Phillip morris is running a bot farm or paying people to tell others that smoking is healthy and doesn't cause cancer, then we have a duty to call that disinformation and strive to correct it. And I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me about the growing lung cancer rates in nonsmokers or that lung cancer is more deadly in nonsmokers.
Not a word of that is accurate.
1. The US government has never had the authority to remove content. They merely flag what they find of foreign and malign origin for platforms, which then take the decisions themselves.
2. The U.S. government worked to uncover foreign influence operations. If those influence operations, aside from promoting chaos, supported one candidate over another, that's not a get-out-of-jail-free card to ignore them.
What it should be is a moment of introspection for conservatives as to why unambiguous enemies of America want the candidate that you want to run the country.
But that introspection has not and probably will never come.
Check the wikipedia page
> The US government has never had the authority to remove content.
this is technically true, but false in practice.
> The U.S. government worked to uncover foreign influence operations. If those influence operations, aside from promoting chaos, supported one candidate over another, that's not a get-out-of-jail-free card to ignore them.
they worked to uncover some foreign influence operations (and broadly propagandized the connection to the political campaign); other foreign influence operations (such as a certain dossier compiled by a foreign intelligence agent, colluding with one of the political parties, and using many foreign intelligence sources), they used as the basis for propaganda in mainstream media, which was laundered back into "evidence" for an intelligence operation against a political candidate. Classic disinformation technique. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNcEVYq2qUg
Do you see what I mean when I say "disinformation is a frame" ?
Check it for what? I can't know what narrative you have in your head which you are trying and failing to communicate to me.
> this is technically true, but false in practice.
lol "I'm wrong but if you think of it a different way, my way, then I'm right."
> such as a certain dossier compiled by a foreign intelligence agent, colluding with one of the political parties
The Steele dossier, which you're referring to, started off as opposition research funded by Republicans. I don't have the time nor the desire to debunk everything else you said point by point.
You see the world the way you want to, and you are shaping reality based on what you want to believe.
A "classic disinformation technique", ironically.
> See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNcEVYq2qUg
See what? A cringe TikTok video? What is this supposedly proof of? I know all these conspiracies make sense in your head, but I literally have no idea what you're trying to say.
I wrote:
> Instead, it was sponsored by taxpayers, and was run by people with clear political goals for the suppression of what they considered "disinformation" "misinformation" and "malinformation"
You wrote:
> Not a word of that is accurate.
Let's break it down.
sponsored by taxpayers: true (funded by DHS)
clear political goals: my opinion, debatable, but I think supported by the facts
suppression of disinformation, misinformation, malinformation: also true
> The Steele dossier, which you're referring to, started off as opposition research funded by Republicans. I don't have the time nor the desire to debunk everything else you said point by point.
The Washington Free Beacon did engage Fusion GPS to perform research based on public information of several Republican candidates, including Trump, but at this phase, Fusion GPS had not yet engaged Steele (a former British MI6 agent) for the project. It was only after Perkins Coie began funding the investigation on behalf of their clients, the Clinton campaign and DNC, that Steele was involved. So it is not correct to claim that the "Steele Dossier" was funded as Republican opposition research, because Steele was not involved, and no foreign intelligence sources were used, until the DNC/Clinton campaign were the paying clients. The FEC found that the DNC/Clinton campaign misrepresented their payments for this opposition research and fined them in 2019.
However, the funding is not the point. The point is what the FBI did with it afterwards. Steele shared the dossier with journalist Michael Isikoff, who wrote an article for Yahoo News in September 2016 titled “U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.” The FBI used both the Steele dossier and this article as evidence for the FISA warrant for surveilling Trump campaign employee Carter Page, without disclosing that the source for this article was the same unverified Steele dossier. This is what I meant when I said that the Steele dossier was washed through the media and then used by the FBI to corroborate the same, even though it added no new information. This was exposed in the 2019 IG report by Michael Horowitz.
The specific allegations against Carter Page, that he had met with some Kremlin officials, and that he had been offered or had been brokering a bribe in the form of shares of the Russian energy company Rosneft, were investigated and never substantiated.
Every word of this is the objective truth, and calling me a liar or an idiot won't help your case.
> See what? A cringe TikTok video? What is this supposedly proof of? I know all these conspiracies make sense in your head, but I literally have no idea what you're trying to say.
The person in this cringe video is none other than Nina Jankowicz, the head of the Disinformation Governance Board, describing the exact disinformation campaign enacted above. You would know this if you had read the wikipedia page.
Please note that I haven't claimed that Republicans don't engage in similar dirty tricks. I am just saying "disinformation is a frame"
Everything in the government is "sponsored by taxpayers". That's how it works.
> clear political goals: my opinion, debatable
Yes as I said, false. Believing it true doesn't make it true.
> The Washington Free Beacon did engage...
Yes as I said it started out as Republican opposition research. You aren't refuting anything I said. You are deflecting and confusing matters, on purpose, so as not to appear wrong in public.
And it's not working.
> The point is what the FBI did with it afterwards
You are right, but not in the way you think. The FBI sat on a credible document from a trusted source regarding high level foreign compromise of a US Presidential candidate as to "not interfere with presidential elections".
This is the same FBI that launched a public investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server (which of course ended with no charges) 11 days before the election.
You are right about FBI interference, just not in the way you think.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/03/fbi-leaks-hi...
I could keep going but this appears to be your red herring to get away from your claim.
> The person in this cringe video is none other than Nina Jankowicz, the head of the Disinformation Governance Board,
She didn't work for DHS when she made that video, and she never actually ran anything because in response to criticism, she was removed and the office was dissolved.
And if you are claiming it is improper to hire partisans to staff critical government functions i'd like to introduce you to the Trump administration, who would never show any level of shame or accountability in response to an awful hire that fucked up and committed crimes, not just made a silly video.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-... https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/28/politics/gabbard-abruptly-ous...
> describing the exact disinformation campaign enacted above
Oh lol this whole thing is just a tin foil hat thing huh? Everything you "know":
- The government takes down content on a partisan basis
- The head of a DHS agency that was created in 2022 (and lasted 3 weeks) was part of a conspiracy to surveil Trump in 2019
- The Steele dossier was "debunked" and the FBI used it against Trump
Depends on secret knowledge or insight only you can see, but for some reason you can't prove.
If you were a serious person, this might matter to you. But you aren't, so it doesn't.
That's the point. You cannot will reality to fit your worldview.
It doesn't work that way.
> Disinformation is a frame. The fact that some people consider it to be an objective category of information is dangerous.
Yes, information cannot be verified as true or false. No one can know anything for sure, because then your feelings and opinions can become facts without having pesky things like evidence or proof.
Why let a small thing like the truth get in the way of a good story? Especially one you've invested so much time into, maybe even a good chunk of your identity as well.
Given all that, I might as well be talking to a wall.
> the board would have no operational authority or capability but would collect best practices for dissemination to DHS organizations already tasked with defending against disinformation threats,
> the board would not monitor American citizens
> the board would study policy questions, best practices, and academic research on disinformation, and then submit guidance to the DHS secretary on how different DHS agencies should conduct analysis of online content.
> the board would monitor disinformation spread by "foreign states such as Russia, China, and Iran" and "transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations", and disinformation spread during natural disasters (listing as an example misinformation spread about the safety of drinking water during Hurricane Sandy). The DHS added that "The Department is deeply committed to doing all of its work in a way that protects Americans' freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy."
> the DGB announced that it would provide quarterly reports to the United States Congress.
There was zero benefit of a doubt given by the GOP, and merely the idea of trying to work against foreign influence seemingly unacceptable. Anything to drum up more fear, and frankly, to give quarter to the destabilizing awful elements of this planet.
Tulso Gabbard called this the Ministry of Truth. But she's also the one who has left America utterly defenseless by ending all safeguards against international disinformation, by shutting down CISA cyber security protection, and by being a fountain of rank disgusting disinformation weaponizing intelligence agencies for base political gain again and again and again. She has close ties to Russia and in my opinion is working for them. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
It's all spin, no bite. The endless fear mongering of the GOP is preventing even basic security of the nation.
Even the "we're not Trump" EU are still gaslighting about the genocide, amongst other things.
I'd be shocked if this wasn't already happening. Both with domestic and foreign targets.
We've been doing propaganda for a century. The methods are changing.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defe...
And it's been one of the ones he's been actively trying to enforce:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/21/health/trans-community-trump-...
https://19thnews.org/2025/03/trump-anti-trans-executive-orde...
Shit, here's an article from TODAY if you want to say these measures are no longer high-priority:
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/school-board-sues-tru...
Just like a good documentary, selecting which set of true, objective facts to insert into one’s attention and narrative can perfectly serve an agenda.
The war has been going on for years with no big changes. I recently stopped watching these videos because it’s obvious they’re propaganda.
Just because it sounds good doesn’t make it true.
This feels like the war on drugs and it won't end well in that nobody wins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
And the USSR had its propaganda arm too. The US also effectively did this but without the same labels criticizing them - for example recently when the Biden administration was pressuring tech companies to censor or ban opinions they didn’t like.
The fact that AI may now be used for this purpose isn’t offensive. It’s that governments (or corporations or any other group) interfere with free speech much more broadly than we think, and don’t just limit that to a few exceptions. Whether the use people or AI, it’s wrong.
> We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
> Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency.
> Interestingly, several of these features run directly counter to the conventional wisdom on effective influence and communication from government or defense sources, which traditionally emphasize the importance of truth, credibility, and the avoidance of contradiction.3 Despite ignoring these traditional principles, Russia seems to have enjoyed some success under its contemporary propaganda model, either through more direct persuasion and influence or by engaging in obfuscation, confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting and messaging.
Basically every country is working on this technology. The US is doing it. China is doing it. Russia is doing it. Europe is doing it.
Propaganda is everywhere
actionfromafar•5mo ago