"We cannot create hundreds of fact-checking websites because those fact-checking websites don’t actually engage in discourse and we have to create discourse, I think, in my opinion. So, Bellingcat has had a lot of experience dealing with this kind of thing in the past. And, I think from that... we can draw some conclusions and some interventions that I think will work."show more

The CEO of open source intelligence firm Bellingcat, funded by US-backed NED, conceded at a recent “disinformation summit” that “fact-checking” has failed. He proposed a new plan - building a global network of university computer labs to create and shape discourse.

Founded in the UK and based in the Netherlands, Bellingcat styles itself as an independent "open source investigations" firm countering so-called "disinformation." Bellingcat received funding from the 100% US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to ramp up operations in 2017. NED was created by the US government in the 80s to handle the funding of global influence operations previously under the purview of the CIA.

At the recent Cambridge Disinformation Summit in the UK, held at the end of April, Elliot Higgins singled out fact-checking as an ineffective way to control online narratives. Higgins believes public opinion and societal responses to real world events and topics must be engineered proactively rather than “fact-checked” passively. He said Bellingcat was already experienced in this type of narrative influence work to shape public discourse. ⬇️📹

Higgins further acknowledged another issue posed to his audience of censors looking to take control of information and discourse - the decline of legacy media. He lamented that "the traditional gatekeepers" of information such as "the newspapers" lacked the capability to take back control of information and discourse. ⬇️📹

Higgins identified several structural factors in the flow of online content that he said need to be addressed, including core functions of social media platforms such as the monetization of engagement. He went on to blame human biases and “fear-based thinking” for unspecified recent developments in America.

The censors realized their "fact-checking" network failed. Establishment media struggles to regain public trust and control narratives. Higgins proposed a solution: create a global network of university computer labs to shape narratives and influence public response to political events in real time.

Higgins floated the idea of combining the resources of university computer science labs around the world for political ends, citing pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses and potential “police violence” against protesters in the U.S. as examples. He hopes to form a network of university computer science departments to power high-tech online investigations, to support the left-wing protesters against the police.

Such efforts are already underway at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where Bellingcat, in partnership with their Open-Source Global Justice Investigations Lab, helped spawn a response against police during Pro-Palestine protests. He said Bellingcat's network of university computer labs would be expanding in the UK to Birmingham, Nottingham, and Sterling University for the 25-26 school year.

Bellingcat may not only be recruiting universities to monitor and influence narratives through open source coordinated journalistic responses, but also to take content down under new censorship legal predicates. The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) will force platforms to remove flagged content or face significant penalties. The DSA sees no borders - any speech deemed to be harmful can be removed. It is perhaps the biggest threat to free speech in the US. Alongside 22 other US-funded entities, we found that Bellingcat is part of a network of NGOs and universities in the EU acting as speech police to monitor and flag which online content should be censored under the DSA.

Bellingcat is a part of at least 2 of the EU's Orwellian "digital media observatories." Notice in the images below, that a vast network of universities are involved in the effort to monitor online speech for censorship.

Many of the censors' greatest challenges - ones that require such extreme information influence and legal solutions in order to control our discourse - stem from Elon Musk's acquisition of then-Twitter. Elon's decision to purchase the platform and subsequent release of the Twitter files largely exposed the in-house censorship apparatuses at platforms, and the direct involvement of governments to demand censorship of certain narratives. Higgins, a staunch proponent of censorship, has called Musk "an absolute disaster" for X.

Higgins was previously a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research (DFR) Lab, one of the most notorious censorship organizations. That very same DFR lab was founded under Damon Wilson, who is now President and CEO of Bellingcat funder NED and previously Vice President of the Atlantic Council.

The DFR Lab was one of the four nongovernmental organizations that comprised the now-notorious Election Integrity Partnership, the DHS-created coalition that led online censorship during the 2020 US Presidential election. Entire narratives regarding the elections were monitored and flagged for removal by DFR Lab and the university computer science labs, which were in direct communication with platforms to ensure flagged speech was removed.

Bottom line: The censors have realized that "fact-checking" is ineffective for artificially controlling and creating our discourse. The establishment media is struggling to compete and take back control of narratives. In-house censorship shops at platforms like X have largely been exposed and dismantled following Elon's acquisition of the platform. The censors are looking for a plan to harness control over discourse and speech online - and they may just be going back to school with a global network of university computer labs.

Logic dictates that something—or someone—always had to exist. Assume it was a “someone,” not a “something.” Why would such a being create a world like ours, one filled with pain? The Advent of Time provides a definitive answer.