Federal government spending $1 million on ‘suspicious meme’ database inspired by Stephen Colbert

A word created by Stephen Colbert on the premiere episode of “The Colbert Report” inspired the database the federal government is handing out at least $1 million to support.

Through a National Science Foundation grant, the U.S. government is paying for the creation of a database of “suspicious memes” and other “false and misleading” political ideas posted on social media.

The database comes from a project based at Indiana University and is known as “Truthy,” inspired by Colbert’s concept of “truthiness.” “Truthiness,” as told by Colbert, is presenting something as fact just because you believe it is true.

The project defines memes as  all “@mentions, #hash_tags, and urls” on Twitter.

A major focus of the project is determining whether the “memes” are created by professional political activists or regular internet users. Truthy’s “About” page said that content is often distributed by the “shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns” and is just one example of “political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution” found on social media.

The ultimate goal of the project, according to the grant, is to eliminate or suppress this content.

Truthy “could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant states. The project also wants to determine what makes a meme go viral.

But while the project claims to be nonpartisan and to want to eliminate misinformation on both sides, the Washington Free Beacon reports that there is a considerable leftist bias in “Truthy.”

The project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer is a loud supporter of several progressive groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority.

Federal funding for “Truthy” is expected to continue until  June 30, 2015.