The File
A university-run partnership flagged millions of election-related posts for platform action during the 2020 election. The Election Integrity Partnership, formed in July 2020, brought together four research organizations to detect and mitigate what it characterized as attempts to deter voting or delegitimize results. Its final report, "The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election," was published in March 2021. The House Judiciary Committee later subpoenaed Stanford Internet Observatory, one of the four partner organizations, after it refused to voluntarily comply with document requests.
The Documented Record
July 2020: The Election Integrity Partnership formed as a coalition of research entities to support real-time information exchange between the research community, election officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, and social media platforms. [DOCUMENTED]
The Partnership's stated objective was to detect and mitigate the impact of attempts to prevent or deter people from voting, or to delegitimize election results. [DOCUMENTED]
March 2021: The Partnership published its final report, "The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election." [DOCUMENTED]
April 12, 2023: The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Stanford Internet Observatory for relevant documents after it refused to voluntarily comply with the Committee's requests. [DOCUMENTED]
The Committee found that Stanford Internet Observatory, as a member of both the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project, used Atlassian's Jira Service Desk to file tickets flagging alleged misinformation and disinformation to social media platforms, and that large platforms moderated content based on these tickets and other information Stanford personnel shared. [DOCUMENTED]
What the Record Does Not Establish
The record does not establish that every flagged post was removed, or that platforms always acted on the Partnership's tickets rather than exercising independent judgment, since the Committee's findings describe a pattern of moderation based on shared information without cataloging the outcome of every individual flagged item. What is documented is the existence of the ticketing system, its use by a university-affiliated research group working alongside government agencies and platforms, and the House Committee's own finding that platforms acted on this information.
Sources
- Election Integrity Partnership formation and objectives, EIP, 2020
- The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election, Election Integrity Partnership, 2021
- Chairman Jordan Presses Stanford Subpoena Compliance, House Judiciary Committee, 2023
Connected Files
NAR-001 documents a specific case affected by this suppression infrastructure. NAR-008 documents the wider election-period suppression complex this partnership was one part of.