Just three staff members remain at the Cyber Observatory, and they are likely to either resign or take jobs at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, which is absorbing the rest of the program, said eight of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The Election Integrity Partnership, a prominent consortium run by election monitors and a team from the University of Washington that identifies widespread misinformation about election procedures and results in real time, updated its webpage to say its work was finished.
Two ongoing lawsuits and two congressional investigations into the observatory have cost Stanford millions in legal fees, a person familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. Students and scholars in the program say they are exhausted by online attacks and harassment at a time when the political climate around disinformation research has become heated and lawmakers have threatened to cut federal funding to universities that study propaganda.
Alex Stamos, a former Facebook chief security officer who founded the Observatory five years ago, became an adviser in November. The contract of the Observatory’s research manager, Renee DiResta, wasn’t renewed in recent weeks.
The Observatory’s collapse is the latest and biggest in a series of setbacks for a community of researchers trying to spot propaganda and explain how false narratives are created, gain traction and are adopted by various groups. Harvard University fired misinformation expert Joan Donovan, who claimed in a December whistle-blowing report that the university’s close and lucrative relationship with Facebook’s parent company Meta led the university to crack down on her research, which was highly critical of the social media giant’s practices.
“The Stanford Internet Observatory has played an important role in understanding a range of digital harms,” said Kate Starbird, who leads the University of Washington’s Election Integrity Partnership’s work and continues to publish on election misinformation.
Starbird said that while most academic studies of online manipulation look at it much later, the watchdog’s “rapid analysis” helped people around the world understand what was happening on the platforms in real time.
Claire Wardle, a professor at Brown University, said the observatory had produced innovative methodologies and trained the next generation of experts.
“Closing a lab like this is always a huge loss, but doing it now in a global election year just makes no sense,” said Wardle, who previously led research at the anti-misinformation nonprofit First Draft. “Universities need to use their resources and their standing in the community to withstand criticism and headlines.”
Dee Mostofi, spokesman for Stanford University “Much of the Institute’s work will continue under new leadership, including its important research on child safety and other online harms, the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, its Trust and Safety Research Conferences, and its Trust and Safety Education Consortium,” the institute said in a statement.
“Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, to stifle investigative freedom and undermine legitimate and much-needed scholarly research at Stanford and across the academic community,” Mostofi added.
The misinformation research has become increasingly controversial, and Stamos, DiResta, and Starbird have been dogged by lawsuits, document requests, and threats of physical harm, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whose House subcommittee has alleged that the Observatory improperly collaborated with federal officials and social media companies, violating conservatives’ free speech rights.
Jordan has requested reams of documents from Stanford, including records of discussions about social media posts between students who volunteered to help the observatory, and Stamos testified for eight hours before the House Judiciary Committee.
“Freedom of speech has won again!” Jordan posted on X on Friday, calling the watchdog part of the “censorship regime.”
The law firm of Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Observatory, Stamos, DiResta and others in May 2023, but the lawsuit is still pending.
In a joint statement, Stamos and DiResta said their work goes beyond elections and that they had been unfairly maligned.
“Politically motivated attacks on our election and vaccine research have no merit, and the attempts by partisan House committee chairs to suppress First Amendment-protected research is a classic example of government weaponization,” they said.
“We are grateful that Stanford University has defended our work before the U.S. Supreme Court, and we are confident that the judicial system will ultimately act to protect our speech and the speech of other scholars.”
The High Court will decide within a few weeks Missouri vs. BidenThis includes claims against the Observatory.
The layoffs were first reported late Thursday by social media newsletter Platformer.
Stamos established the watchdog after publicly disclosing that Russia had tried to influence the 2016 election. Divisions arise on Facebook, conflicts arise The company’s chief executive officer and special advisor Robert S. Mueller III later cited Facebook’s activities in indicting Kremlin contractors. At Stanford, Stamos and his team delved into research into influence operations around the world, including operations that date back to the Pentagon.
Mr. Stamos told officials he stepped down as leader of the observatory last year, in part due to political pressure. He raised much of the project’s funding, but the remaining faculty have been unable to replicate his success as many philanthropists shifted focus to new topics such as artificial intelligence.
Major time-limited grants from the Hewlett Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and others have ended, the organizations confirmed to The Washington Post. No comparable new funding has materialized.
Staff had hoped that Stanford would continue to fund the group until the crucial election in November.
Had the university further supported the project, it would have risked alienating conservative donors, Silicon Valley figures and lawmakers who have threatened to halt all federal funding for disinformation research or cut support overall.
The watchdog’s non-election work has included developing a curriculum to teach college students how to address trust and safety issues on social media platforms and launching the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the topic. It has also investigated organizations that publish child sexual exploitation material online and flaws in the U.S. system for reporting it, and helped prepare platforms to handle an influx of computer-generated material.
“We look forward to Stanford University supporting the rest of the SIO team and providing a safe home for future research into how the internet is being used to harm individuals and democracies,” Stamos and DiResta said in a statement.
