{"id":110679,"date":"2026-08-11T20:51:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T20:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/how-the-censorship-industrial-complex-is-changing-the-internet-and-us-policy\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T20:51:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T20:51:29","slug":"how-the-censorship-industrial-complex-is-changing-the-internet-and-us-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/how-the-censorship-industrial-complex-is-changing-the-internet-and-us-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"How the \u201ccensorship-industrial complex\u201d is changing the Internet and US policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard the term \u201ccensorship-industrial complex\u201d on April 15, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s when I got the tip that a small office in the U.S. State Department, which focused on monitoring and countering foreign disinformation from the likes of Russia, Iran, and China, was facing imminent shutdown\u2014the next day.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And the reason? R\/FIMI, as the office was called, was accused of serving as the State Department\u2019s central hub in the so-called censorship-industrial complex\u2014a sprawling constellation of government agencies, academics, civil society groups, and Big Tech platforms allegedly conspiring to suppress conservative and populist speech online under the guise of combating disinformation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2025\/04\/16\/1115256\/us-office-that-counters-foreign-disinformation-is-being-eliminated-say-officials\/\">broke<\/a> the story around 10:30AM on April 16, (and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2025\/05\/01\/1115988\/senior-state-department-official-sought-internal-communications-with-journalists-european-officials-and-trump-critics\/\">broke<\/a> more in the weeks that followed) but for me, it was just the start of a deep reporting rabbit-hole into an idea that had moved from the fringes of the right-wing Internet into the mainstream, championed and spread by a network of well-funded conservative media platforms and non-profits, and finally as a sort of prevailing logic behind much of the second Trump administration\u2019s domestic and foreign policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But this isn\u2019t just a policy story. The weaponization of ideas about censorship also affects the billions of people globally who get information, or interact with each other, online\u2014which is to say, all of us.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For more on what the narrative means for the Internet, read my story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/08\/07\/1141105\/how-ideas-of-a-vast-censorship-network-moved-from-the-online-fringe-to-trump-policy\/\">ici<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard the term \u201ccensorship-industrial complex\u201d on April 15, 2025.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I got the tip that a small office in the U.S. State Department, which focused on monitoring and countering foreign disinformation from the likes of Russia, Iran, and China, was facing imminent shutdown\u2014the next day.\u00a0 And the reason? R\/FIMI, as the office was called, was accused of serving as the State Department\u2019s central hub in the so-called censorship-industrial complex\u2014a sprawling constellation of government agencies, academics, civil society groups, and Big Tech platforms allegedly conspiring to suppress conservative and populist speech online under the guise of combating disinformation.\u00a0 I broke the story around 10:30AM on April 16, (and broke more in the weeks that followed) but for me, it was just the start of a deep reporting rabbit-hole into an idea that had moved from the fringes of the right-wing Internet into the mainstream, championed and spread by a network of well-funded conservative media platforms and non-profits, and finally as a sort of prevailing logic behind much of the second Trump administration\u2019s domestic and foreign policy.\u00a0 But this isn\u2019t just a policy story. The weaponization of ideas about censorship also affects the billions of people globally who get information, or interact with each other, online\u2014which is to say, all of us.\u00a0 For more on what the narrative means for the Internet, read my story here.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pmpro_default_level":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,5,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-club","category-committee","category-news","category-uncategorized","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.3 - 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R\/FIMI, as the office\u2026","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youzum.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}