| Friend,
The fight against disinformation drew big headlines back in January, when the white-supremacist insurrection put a spotlight on just how dangerous the rise of propaganda is — with consequences including Twitter permanently banning Trump and Amazon and Google kicking Parler off their services.
Free Press Action played a central role in these wins and others. And as someone who has taken action with us in the past year, we want you to know that we’ve been hard at work in the fight against disinformation.
From Rupert Murdoch’s launch of Fox News in 1996 to Donald Trump’s successful effort to convince large swaths of the public that only he and his allies could be trusted, the fight against disinformation has become a defining battle of our times.
While the importance of the wins we saw in January can’t be understated, beating back the tide of lies that have convinced more than two-thirds of Republicans that the 2020 election was invalid1 will take a long time and require constant effort.
Here is some of what we have been up to since January — thanks to support from people like you — in the fight against disinformation: We exposed Facebook’s Spanish-language disinformation crisis, educating the press and Congress about the company’s complete failures on this front and launching the #YaBastaFacebook campaign with allies. We developed a detailed 4-step plan to upend Big Tech’s hate-for-profit business model — and are calling on our allies in the House and Senate to act now. We submitted comments to the Facebook Oversight Board, demanding that the company permanently ban Donald Trump’s account. We undertook a massive research project to uncover the extent of Facebook’s, Twitter’s and YouTube’s failures to meet the content-moderation demands of civil-rights organizations — with a final report coming this spring. Channeling our strong record of working with Congress, we called on our senators and representatives to stop cable companies from forcing subscribers to subsidize Fox News. We engaged in ongoing collaboration and organizing with tech workers. This is just a small number of the actions Free Press Action has taken since the Jan. 6 insurrection to fight back against the disinformation that threatens our democracy, our ability to end the COVID-19 pandemic and our safety as the risk of right-wing extremism continues to rise.
Thousands of supporters like you have taken action along with us — calling on tech companies to end all support of seditious members of Congress, demanding a functioning FCC that can help us address the scourge of propaganda and more — and joined our Facebook Live conversations, including last week’s discussion of the media’s role in fueling Anti-Asian hate.
None of this would be possible without the actions and support of people like you. Thank you for standing with us in the fight against disinformation.
In solidarity,
Candace
Free Press Action
freepress.net
P.S. Because our independence is incredibly important to our ability to fight for a just media system, Free Press Action does not take a single dollar from business, government or political parties. That means it truly is supporters like you who make everything we do possible. Please consider making a gift today in support of the fight against disinformation.
1. “Majority of Republicans Say 2020 Election Was Invalid: Poll,” The Hill, Feb. 25, 2021 |
