Disinformation Watchdogs Are Under Pressure. This Group Refuses to Stop.; The New York Times, November 1, 2024

Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times; Disinformation Watchdogs Are Under Pressure. This Group Refuses to Stop

"Inside two small, windowless conference rooms on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, a group of students and researchers is prowling the internet to track the rumors and conspiracy theories eroding faith in this year’s presidential election...

“We can’t possibly track them all down,” Kate Starbird, a founder of the university’s Center for an Informed Public, said of the rumors, which began with a steady drip in recent weeks and have now turned into a torrent.

Four years ago, the center’s researchers were part of a larger coalition formed to debunk claims by President Donald J. Trump and others that the 2020 election was rigged. At its peak in the weeks around that vote, the effort had 120 analysts working around the clock to monitor disinformation.

In the last two years, however, that work came under a concerted political and legal attack from conservatives who portrayed it as a secret scheme to censor critics.

Called the Election Integrity Partnership, the coalition has since collapsed under the weight of that attack, smothered by civil lawsuits, Congressional subpoenas and records requests that have been time consuming and costly.

But the Center for an Informed Public has persevered, adapting to more limited resources, even as disinformation about the country’s electoral process has become more pernicious than ever."