Election ‘disinfo’ research group Stanford Internet Observatory to shut down: report

Sources familiar with the matter told Platformer News that SIO’s founding director Alex Stamos left his position in November while its research director, Renee DiResta, left last week after her contract was not renewed. Another staff member’s contact expired this month, and others have been told to seek jobs elsewhere.

The sources noted that some members of the eight-person team may remain in roles elsewhere at Stanford and that the university may keep the SIO branding, but election research will not continue.

SIO will reportedly be restricted under the observatory’s faculty sponsor Jeff Hancock, and the SIO’s work on child safety will continue under Hancock’s other program the Stanford Social Media Lab.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Online Trust and Safety and its Trust and Safety Research Conference will continue as well. The journal is funded separately.

A Stanford spokesperson told Platformer in a statement, "The important work of SIO continues under new leadership, including its critical work on child safety and other online harms, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, the Trust and Safety Research Conference, and the Trust and Safety Teaching Consortium."

"Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia."

The SIO was hit with three lawsuits by conservative groups alleging illegal collusion with the federal government to censor speech, and has been subpoenaed by the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The SIO was also the center of a Twitter Files release in March 2023. Journalist Matt Taibbi revealed how the SIO’s Virality Project, launched in 2020, "worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content."

The Virality Project reviewed content on various social media platforms on a "mass scale," frequently marking true stories as misinformation. The Virality Project also told Twitter that "true stories that could fuel hesitancy" to get the Covid vaccine, including things like celebrity deaths or concerns over vaccine passports, should be considered "standard vaccine misinformation on your platform."

"The Virality Project was specifically not based on 'assertions of fact,' but public submission to authority, acceptance of narrative, and pronouncements by figures like Anthony Fauci. The project's central/animating concept was, 'You can't handle the truth,'" Taibbi wrote.