Taxpayer Supported Censorship Spending

Foundation for Freedom Online

  • National Science Foundation (NSF) spent $38.8 million on government grants and contracts to combat “misinformation” since the start of the Biden administration.
  • 64 NSF grants totaling $31.8 million were given to 42 different colleges and universities to research the science of stopping viral ideas.
  • Some grants explicitly target “populist politicians” and “populist communications” to scientifically determine ”how best to counter populist narratives.”

When most people think of the National Science Foundation (NSF), they think about the US government investing tax dollars in grand advancements in mathematics, aerospace and engineering.

But under the Biden administration, the fastest-growing field of NSF grant funding appears to be the science of censorship.

At Foundation for Freedom Online, we previously reported the strange fact that the exact two universities who partnered with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to censor the 2020 election received a $3 million joint grant from the National Science Foundation just months after the election ended.

Neither of those two academic “disinfo labs” were taxpayer-funded before the 2020 election. But then, after an election where in effectthey exclusively censored the social media opposition of the current administration, suddenly the current administration started hooking them up with government grants.

After that revelation, we investigated every NSF grant issued in 2021 and 2022 relating to social media “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Our goal was to determine the extent to which NSF is spending US tax dollars on censoring US taxpayers.

The Twenty-Seven Most Embarrassing Reactions to Taibbi Thread About Twitter Censoring Hunter Biden Tweets