EDITORIAL: ‘Study’ suppresses political expression

Our leaders in Washington want us to trust them. They want us to believe that we are are truly free to speak our minds and that, no, they are definitely not monitoring our conversations or otherwise snooping on us.

The fact of the matter, however, is that they have a distorted and dangerous view of what’s best for us, and they are most definitely monitoring us — well, some of us, anyway.

Case in point: The Truthy Project.

A study being conducted by researchers at Indiana University, backed by a nearly $1 million National Science Foundation grant and named after a segment on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” the Truthy Project uses data collected from certain Twitter feeds to subjectively determine how “misinformation” spreads through social media. Researchers use Truthy to monitor “suspicious memes,” “false and misleading ideas,” “political smears,” “astroturfing,” “hate speech” and other “social pollution.”

Researchers, who encourage the public to participate in the study by clicking on the “Truthy” button every time they see a “suspicious” meme, have used the taxpayer-funded initiative to collect a database of more than 600,000 political tweets. The project’s lead researcher, Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, even bragged in a 2012 book he co-authored that Truthy was instrumental in getting several conservative Twitter accounts suspended.

The Truthy Project isn’t about study. It’s about suppression. And it clearly targets a specific ideology.

Earlier this week, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee sent a letter to National Science Foundation Director France Cordova, demanding answers about the project. “The Committee and taxpayers deserve to know how NSF decided to award a large grant for a project that proposed to develop standards for online political speech, and to apply those standards through development of a website that targeted conservative political comments,” wrote Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

“Political smears” and “false and misleading ideas” are protected speech. The day government decides which kinds of expression are acceptable — whether through direct regulation or a tax-funded “study” that directly supports a brazenly political operation — is the day the Bill of Rights dies.

These kinds of initiatives only serve to validate Americans’ concerns about federal power. The government has no business studying, much less interfering with, protected expression. It’s the first step toward tyranny. Taxpayer support of the Truthy Project must end immediately.