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On Wednesday, UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle wrote to Ofcom asking for “key components” of the Online Safety Act to be implemented as a matter of urgency.

Kyle used the civil unrest in the wake of the Southport murders to impress the harm online “disinformation” causes and asks for an update on the progress of establishing an Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation.

Two organisations are known to be actively lobbying Ofcom to shape the committee’s powers, duties and members: Full Fact and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.  Both have links to past and/or present UK governments and one is run by a suspected spy.

Yesterday, Reclaim the Net published an article about the contents of a letter from the UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, to the Office of Communications (“Ofcom”), a government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries in the United Kingdom. 

You can read the article HERE.  At the end of the article, Reclaim the Net highlights the Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation as one of the things that “Kyle considers to be very important.”  And it’s the Advisory Committee that we want to focus on in our article.

Table of Contents

Kyle’s Letter to Ofcom

In his letter dated 16 October, Kyle demanded of Ofcom:  “I also want to emphasise the importance of the Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation that Ofcom are establishing under the OSA [Online Safety Act]. I look forward to hearing about Ofcom’s progress with the committee and what its key areas of focus are likely to be following the events of this summer.”

By “events of this summer,” Kyle was referring to civil unrest seen in parts of the UK in the wake of the Southport murders.  “One of the most alarming aspects of this unrest was how quickly and widely content spread. In light of this, I would appreciate an update from you on the assessment Ofcom has made about how illegal content, particularly disinformation, spread during the period of disorder; and if there are targeted measures which Ofcom is considering for the next iteration of the illegal harms code of practice in response,” he wrote in his letter to Ofcom.

As Richard North noted in a blog, “the ‘misinformation’ published in respect of the Southport killer’s identity, [ ] has become something of an obsession with the Starmer regime.” 

Perhaps with Kyle’s letter to Ofcom, we are being provided with further proof as to why.

The Ofcom Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation (“Advisory Committee”) is a statutory body yet to be established by Ofcom to provide advice on addressing online disinformation and misinformation.

Section 152 of the Online Safety Act states that Ofcom must establish an Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation.  As intimated in Kyle’s correspondence, the establishment of this committee is in progress.

In the meantime, groups are lobbying Ofcom to shape what form the Advisory Committee takes, and its duties and powers.

Who is Lobbying Ofcom?

Ofcom has no information on its website about the Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation.  However, two organisations have publicised they are in consultation with Ofcom.  Both are nefarious.  One is Full Fact, in our article stylised as FullFact, and the other is the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.

FullFact or fullfact.org

FullFact, a UK-based “fact-checking” organisation, has been actively advocating for the Advisory Committee’s creation and has provided input on its potential scope and functions.

In an April 2024 blog, FullFact stated, “The Act did not go far enough on tackling harmful misinformation. Nevertheless, there are elements which have the potential to be useful; it’s important that we make the most of them. ”

“Informed by our experience on the frontline of tackling misinformation over the past 15 years, we have set out to Ofcom how we think the Committee should be set up,” FullFact said.  

Adding, “We have called for protections to be in place to ensure that the Chair of the Committee is independent, and not a representative of any internet platform.  The last thing we need is what is called ‘regulatory capture’ – when companies abuse their power to control the agenda of a body that must act in the public interest.”

“The last thing we need is regulatory capture.”  Let’s remind ourselves what Full Fact is.  In 2022 we published an article:

The name “FullFact” is Newspeak as is the so-called “fact-check” service it purports to provide.  As we wrote in a previous article, FullFact is essentially a blog site headed by Conservative Party donor Michael Samuel, heavily funded by tech giants with vested interests, and staffed mainly by ex-civil servants and other government agencies such as the Behavioural Insights Team.

It’s important to note FullFact has ambitions to globalise its “fact-checking” as it is developing “world-leading technology and new research to spot repeated claims, and find out how bad information can be tackled at a global scale.”

There are already worrying signs FullFact has become the official propaganda arm of the UK government and globalist censorship organisations.

Is the UK Government using FullFact.org to do its dirty work? The Exposé, 24 April 2022

FullFact’s staff has changed since then; judging by the short biographies, it appears it is no longer staffed by ex-civil servants and other government agencies.  However, there are several former BBC and other corporate media employees.

Currently, FullFact’s Chief Executive is Chris Morris, who was previously BBC’s first dedicated fact checker on air and online, pioneering “fact-checking” on corporate outlets through his development and leadership of BBC Reality Check.

Its senior political analyst is Nasim Asl.  Before joining FullFact she worked on BBC Question Time and BBC Scotland News.  “Journalist” Leo Benedictus joined FullFact in January 2020. Previously, for 15 years, he worked freelance as a feature writer for the Guardian, Prospect and the New Scientist. “Reporter” Charlotte Green previously worked at the Manchester Evening News. Health “journalist” Jess Hacker worked at Pulse. Specialist “journalist” Tony Thompson previously worked as the Crime Correspondent of The Observer and News Editor of Time Out. Senior “journalist”  Sarah Turnnidge previously worked at HuffPost UK.  Head of AI Andrew Dudfield was previously the Chief Publishing Officer of the Office for National Statistics and before that spent a decade working at the BBC.  Interim Head of Communications & Policy Mark Frankel worked as a journalist for BBC News for nearly two decades before joining FullFact.

Chief Operating Officer Laura Dewis previously spent a decade leading digital transformation in government. Before that, she worked in product and editorial roles at The Open University and the BBC. She has served on advisory groups for the Cabinet Office, the United Nations Statistics Division, UNESCO, the OECD, the UK Regulators Network and Harvard University.

But it is the Trustees which begins to show the true nature of FullFact. The Board of Trustees “is and always has been a cross-party Board, with members from the three main UK-wide political parties.”  It’s worth reading through the short biographies on FullFact’s website for each of the Trustees for yourself.  Among the Trustees are people who have links to past and present UK governments as well as, either currently or in the past, links to the World Economic Forum, BBC and other left-wing corporate media, the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.

In 2023, we published an abbreviated version of Racket News’ report on the censorship industrial complex, which named the top 50 organisations forming this global complex.  FullFact was number 30 on the list with the description:

Type: A leading UK “fact-checking” “NGO” with mountains of money from Big Tech.

You may have read about them when: Founded by Michael John Samuel, the son of an aristocrat, Full Fact epitomises the elitism and down-talking of the “fact-checking” industry. Full Fact was the first UK member of Facebook’s Third-Party Fact-Checking programme.  Full Fact led a successful campaign to have vaccine critic and Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen removed from the party. Full Fact has even developed its own AI-driven Robocop to police speech online.

What we know about funding: Full Fact takes huge amounts of Big Tech money, almost $2.5 million between 2019-2021 from Facebook alone. Another example of corporations funding the people who supposedly keep them accountable. They also receive strong support from Google, Poynter and Omidyar.

What they do/What they are selling: Truth policing in the service of the powerful.

In sum: Leading candidate for the inevitable UK Big Brother award.

The Citizen’s Starter Kit to the top 50 Organisations in the Global Censorship Cartel, The Exposé, 28 July 2023

When we published our article in 2022 about FullFact, we noted that in 2021 they were predominantly funded by Facebook and Google.  It was the same in 2023, the latest year for which funding has been declared.  On its website, FullFact has a table listing its funders in 2023.  Below we have shown the top 5 funders.

Centre for Countering Digital Hate

Centre for Countering Digital Hate (“CCDH”) purports to be a non-profit organisation founded in 2018 with the mission to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation. Based in London, UK, it has offices in Washington, D.C. It is best known for working with Rachel Riley to remove Katie Hopkins from Twitter and David Icke from Facebook and YouTube.

The reality is that CCDH is a lobby group that campaigns for more online censorship. In 2023, David Marks wrote: “As [CCDH] face increasing scrutiny and pressure, a thorough examination of their origins and tactics reveals the mechanics of an organisation whose mission is to censor enemies of the state and the pharmaceutical industry.”

CCDH is number 25 on Racket News’ list of top 50 organisations in the censorship industrial complex: “You may have read about them when they issued a report called the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ which sought to ‘deplatform’ dissident covid thinkers from Substack, including RFK Jr, smearing them as ‘anti-vaxxers’ … What is unique about CCHD is its blatant distortions, vicious tone, and cynical appropriation of anti-racist, anti-sexist, and public health rhetoric … Current campaign work focuses on pressuring advertisers to leave Twitter due to Musk making it a ‘safe haven for hate and intolerance’.”

The nefarious organisation was founded in 2018 by Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s campaign manager in the 2020 Labour Party leadership contest.  It is run by Imran Ahmed, a former adviser to ex-Labour ministers Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle, who is a suspected spy.

At the end of August, CCDH held an “emergency” meeting to discuss the role of social media in fuelling the civil unrest that followed the murder of three girls in Southport. 

The meeting was attended by officials in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (“DSIT”), the Home Office, Ofcom and the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit at the Metropolitan Police, as well as representatives of the Community Security Trust, Tell Mama, the Incorporated Society of British Advertising and current and former Members of Parliament (“MPs”).

After the meeting, CCDH published proposals that were made at the meeting.  The meeting was held under the Chatham House rule so it didn’t attribute views to individual participants.

The most eye-catching of the proposals made, Free Speech Union said, is that the Online Safety Act should be amended to grant Ofcom additional “emergency response” powers to fight “misinformation” that poses a “threat” to “national security” and “the health or safety of the public.”

The CCDH’s proposal involves amending the section 175 ‘special circumstances’ directive created by the Online Safety Act to enable Peter Kyle MP, the Secretary of State for DSIT (also represented at CCDH’s chinwag, of course), to issue a ‘directive’ to Ofcom to ramp up its censorship powers if the Government feels there is a threat to national security or to the health and safety of the public. Not only that, but the ‘objective’ he would be ‘directing’ Ofcom to prioritise, e.g. what online content to remove, would be defined by him.

Ofcom is of course free to meet under the Chatham House rule with as many think tanks as it likes – but under the proposals put forward by CCDH, the regulator would become a weapon of censorship wielded by the Government.

Ofcom “needs emergency powers” to tackle misinformation, claims well-connected left-wing lobby group, Free Speech Union, 29 August 2024

Free Speech Union isn’t exaggerating.  At the end of September, Ahmed hosted a side event at the UN General Assembly in New York.  Opening the event he said:

Whatever policy issue you care about, fixing the disorder in our information ecosystem is integral to the solution. 

If you care about climate, then you worry about a tidal wave of climate disinformation designed to undermine the scientific consensus astride which our ecosystem of analysis and solutions sits.

If you care about gender inequality, then you worry that social media algorithms are promoting misogyny and being hijacked to spread disinformation about abortions.

If you care about conflict resolution and peace, then you worry about polarisation and amplified hate speech, which make our societies feel less safe, more polarised, sclerotic, and harder to cohere. 

CCDH at the United Nations: Fixing the disorder in our information ecosystem, Centre for Countering Digital Hate, 23 September 2024