[caption id=”attachment_99427″ align=”aligncenter” width=”5184″] (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
[/caption]
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is joining the growing dissent against the federally-funded “Truthy” study designed to monitor political speech on social media.
In a blog post Thursday, titled “#KillingFreeSpeech,” McCarthy promises that the House Committee on Science will be conducting oversight “in the coming months on this and other questionable government-funded research projects.”
“Why does the government suddenly care about your Twitter activity?” McCarthy asked in his post.
“…Government funding of this project is not only a waste during a time of budgetary constraints, it is also a danger to free society better suited for a George Orwell book than a country founded on the idea of liberty.”
Truthy is a research project based at Indiana University. Its premise is rooted in a concept coined by comedian Stephen Colbert — “truthiness.” “Truthiness,” as told by Colbert, is presenting something as fact just because you believe it is true.
Truthy plans to create a database of political memes shared on social media and claims the project “could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”
Truthy’s “About” page said that these memes are often distributed by the “shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns” and are examples of “political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution” found on social media. The project defines memes as all “@mentions, #hash_tags, and urls” on Twitter.
The ultimate goal of the project, according to the grant, is to eliminate or suppress this content. The federal government has given at least $1 million to this research in the form of grants.
McCarthy is the first in Republican leadership to speak out against the project, but not the only person to remark on its Orwellian nature.
Ajit Pai, one of two Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission, has also publicly denounced the project as nothing more than the government monitoring of free speech. Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said Tuesday, “The government has no business using taxpayer dollars to support limiting free speech on Twitter and other social media.”
Despite the criticism, the National Journal reports that the researchers stand behind the project and believe it is all “misinformation” out there about the project.
“In no way are the researchers involved in this project attempting to track political speech on behalf of the federal government or any other entity, as has been stated in recent months,” Indiana University said in a statement on Wednesday. To do so would be in violation of the basic tenet of federally funded research, which is to provide necessary resources to promote basic research for the public good. Indiana University stands behind this work.”
