{"id":189718,"date":"2019-06-11T07:30:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T07:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=189718"},"modified":"2019-06-13T05:30:11","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T05:30:11","slug":"the-trust-project-big-media-and-silicon-valleys-weaponized-algorithms-silence-dissent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=189718","title":{"rendered":"The Trust Project: Big Media and Silicon Valley\u2019s Weaponized Algorithms Silence Dissent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whitney Webb — Mint Press June 7, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Trust Project founder Sally Lehrman speaks at the 2018 organization of News Ombudsmen conference. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

After the failure of Newsguard \u2014 the news rating system backed by a cadre of prominent neoconservative personalities \u2014 to gain traction<\/strong><\/span><\/a> among American tech and social media companies, another organization has quietly stepped in to direct the news algorithms of tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though different from Newsguard, this group, known as \u201cThe Trust Project,\u201d has a similar goal of restoring \u201ctrust\u201d in corporate, mainstream media outlets, relative to independent alternatives, by applying \u201ctrust indicators\u201d to social-media news algorithms in a decidedly untransparent way. The funding of \u201cThe Trust Project\u201d \u2014 coming largely from big tech companies like Google; government-connected tech oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar; and the Knight Foundation, a key Newsguard investor \u2014 suggests that an ulterior motive in its tireless promotion of \u201ctraditional\u201d mainstream media outlets is to limit the success of dissenting alternatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of particular importance is the fact that the Trust Project\u2019s \u201ctrust indicators\u201d are already <\/em>being used to control what news is promoted and suppressed by top search engines like Google and Bing and massive social-media networks like Facebook. Though the descriptions of these \u201ctrust indicators\u201d \u2014 eight of which are currently in use \u2014 are publicly available, the way they are being used by major tech and social media companies is not.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trust Project\u2019s goal is to increase public trust in the very same traditional media outlets that Newsguard favored and to use HTML-embedded codes in favored news articles to promote their content at the expense of independent alternatives. Even if its effort to promote \u201ctrust\u201d in establishment media fail, its embedded-code hidden within participating news sites allow those establishment outlets to skirt the same algorithms currently targeting their independent competition, making such issues of \u201ctrust\u201d largely irrelevant as it moves to homogenize the online media landscape in favor of mainstream media.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trust Project\u2019s director, Sally Lehrman, made it clear<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that, in her view, the lack of public trust in mainstream media and its declining readership is the result of unwanted \u201ccompetition by principle-free enterprises [that] further undermines its [journalism\u2019s] very role and purpose as an engine for democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting to know the Trust Project<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Funded by tech oligarchs and assisted by the ADL, the Trust Project appears to be trying to restore the public’s waning trust in the MSM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189718"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189741,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189718\/revisions\/189741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}