A censorial unit called the Counter Disinformation Unit, set up by the previous UK Government, had contracted Logically AI, a London-based start-up, to flag lawful speech under the banner of countering misinformation and disinformation. Now, the unit has been rebranded as the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) – it is active and continues to monitor “disinformation” narratives.
Among the posts flagged by the start-up for government scrutiny was a tweet by privacy and civil liberties campaigner Mark Johnson, who tweeted a link to a petition opposing vaccine passports.
Commenting on this worrying trend of governments using AI companies to censor or suppress free speech online, Mark, who is Legal and Policy Advisor for civil liberties NGO Big Brother Watch, said:
“I do think there’s a massive boom in the proliferation of these fact checking companies or counter disinformation, AI-based companies”
“They are tapping into a wider kind of trend, which is essentially censoring — the platforms and other big players will say ‘moderating’ — but really censoring speech based on its perceived veracity and accuracy. This is a trend that’s happening across the western world at the moment.”