Renée DiResta

Renée DiResta
Born	1981
Alma mater	Stony Brook University
Website	www.reneediresta.com

Renée DiResta (born 1981)^[1] is a writer and former research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).^[2] DiResta has written about pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. She has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Congress on ongoing efforts to prevent online and social media disinformation. Congressional oversight committee investigations have determined and published findings that she worked with officials in both the Obama and Biden administrations to first promote political party misinformation through social media and second, to coerce social media to censor adverse reporting and opinions of news media and ordinary Americans^[3]

Education and career[edit]

DiResta attended Stony Brook University and in 2004 received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science // Political Science.^[4] DiResta has stated that as an undergraduate student she worked as an intern for the CIA, but that her association with that agency ended in 2004.^[5]

Until 2011 she worked in finance, as a trader at Jane Street Capital after which she worked in high tech venture capital firms until 2014.^{[citation needed]} In 2015, DiResta co-founded Vaccinate California, an organization designed to promote vaccination in California.^[6] Di Resta was Director of Research at Yonder, a company that specialized in information integrity. Yonder was called to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about possible Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.^{[citation needed]} Currently, DiResta is Technical Research Manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory.^[7]

Vaccination misinformation research[edit]

DiResta has advised the California State Senate on matters of vaccination misinformation. Following an outbreak of measles in the U.S., DiResta began research into misinformation around vaccines. Along with data scientist, Gilad Lotan, DiResta identified that on Twitter, 25% of anti-vaccine information came from 0.6% of users, in a phenomenon DiResta described as similar to automation. This study additionally identified groups of individuals who would actively create false accounts and "shape public opinion about particular policies". This report was used by Vaccinate California and the California State Senate to demonstrate that the majority of Californians were in favor of removal of vaccine-opt out policies, resulting in California Senate Bill 277 passing into law.^[8]

In 2021, the Virality Project, an organization DiResta is a part of, released the report "Memes, Magnets and Microchips: Narrative dynamics around COVID-19 vaccines" advising social media sites and health officials on how to counter COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.^[9]

Social media and disinformation research[edit]

DiResta has previously written that social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, are used as "useful testing grounds for bad actors". Specifically, she wrote that foreign governments, such as Russia, will pilot memes and false stories online to see what can become popular and sway public opinion.^[10] DiResta described it as "the asymmetry of passion" where extremist groups will intentionally attempt to reinforce narratives to "shape the reality" of viewers. This, according to DiResta, has seeped into the public policy of vaccines, zoning laws, and water fluoridation".^[10]

During her ongoing tenure at the Stanford Internet Observatory, DiResta led investigations into the Russian Internet Research Agency's efforts to manipulate United States society and the GRU's efforts to influence the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election.^[11] This included a report to the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), detailing the means by which the GRU used social media to influence the election and how social media poses an ongoing risk to US politics.^[12] This report further stated that Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet's algorithms were intentionally manipulated in a multi-year effort by the Internet Research Agency, directed by the Russian government, and had successfully created false personas that spread misinformation to an estimated hundreds of thousands of Americans. The identified purpose of this effort was to "deepen political divisions".^[13][14]

DiResta is a member of the Council for Responsible Social Media, a project of the campaign reform lobbying group Issue One.^[15][16] She has criticized Mark Zuckerberg's controlling share of Meta and Elon Musk's Acquisition of Twitter, calling for greater transparency and accountability for these sites.^[17]

Colluding with Democrat administrations to push political misinformation[edit]

In 2021, DiResta advocated for a government propaganda center as part of creating a government censorship center to legally violate First Amendment rights. DiResta euphemistically referred to this as a “Center of Excellence,” within the federal government. “Creation of a ‘Center of Excellence’ within the federal government,” she said, “could tie in a federal lead with platforms, academics, and nonprofits to stay ahead of these emerging narratives and trends.”“As narratives emerge,” she explained, “this Center of Excellence could deploy experts to relevant federal agencies to help prepare pre-bunking and messaging, to create and identify trusted voices in communities, and to build coalitions to respond.”^[18]

Officials within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security worked with the DiResta and Stanford's SIO censorship think tank she managed to coordinate censuring adverse views and news from news media and ordinary Americans. The SIO and DiResta both long refused Congressional oversight committee requests for their emails and data relating to their communications and coordination with Obama and Biden administration officials between 2015 and 2023.^[19]

Senate Democrats, the New York Times, and other news media close to the Intelligence Community (IC) heavily promoted DiResta starting in 2018, when she spread disinformation exaggerating the influence of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election while continuing to promote the 'Russia Dossier' by claiming it was validated intelligence agency product.^[20]

SIO participated in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), with DiResta as manager of activities and coordination with government administration officials. A November 2023 report from the Congressional Judiciary subcommittee reported EIP was created at the request of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and that "Stanford's SIO and EIP provided a way for the federal government to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny."^[21]

While Stanford, the EIP and DiResta denied having any part in censorship of adversarial news and commentary on behalf of the administration, in the face of being subpoenaed they turned over private communications from DiResta that showed the role of her and the EIP in routinely censoring factual information and adverse satire, jokes, and political opinions. Administration officials would submit complaint reports which DiResta and her EIP personnel would use to compile a list of the offending posts, articles, and commentary to submit to social media platforms for review and censorship.

DiResta and the EIP would then recommend to social media how best to censor those news articles, posts, cartoons, etc in their lists. Censorship recommendations from DiResta and the EIP ranged from deleting posts, minimizing viewership, to de-platforming and suspending accounts as was done to the New York Post concerning Hunter Biden's laptop. EIP recommended censorship was almost exclusively suggested for Republicans and any others adversarial to the Democrats and government, while untruthful content regarding Republicans was left untouched. Republicans were not made aware of these venues to register complaints regarding misinformation with the EIP.^[22]

By their own admission in the EIP's 2020 post election report, DiResta's EIP was expressly created “in consultation with CISA” to serve an unconstitutional purpose, as government's proxy to circumvent legal restrictions on illicit government censorship activity. "Yet, no government agency in the United States has the explicit mandate to monitor and correct election mis- and disinformation. This is especially true for election disinformation that originates from within the United States, which would likely be excluded from law enforcement action under the First Amendment"^[23]

In her notes for a fall 2021 presentation at the annual Homeland Security CISA Summit, DiResta wrote, as part of her presentation script, that the “gap” the EIP was intended to fill “had several components,” one of which was “[u]nclear legal authorities including very real censorship of 1st amendment rights questions.”^[24]

In Missouri v. Biden^[25], in an injunction and opinion released July 4, 2023, the court held that the Biden administration's Homeland Security and DiRestra's EIP were completely intertwined.

In 2020 and 2021, DiResta while heading the SIO led a DHS effort that successfully coerced social media platforms to censor disfavored views of Covid such as questioning whether Covid came not from bats, but perhaps from the Chinese military biolab instead. And whether government agencies led by Dr. Fauci used taxpayer dollars to fund the gain of function research into deadly coronoviruses in that lab.^[26]

DiRista worked closely with the FBI's Brian Chan to suppress reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop as being real - DiRista was at the front of the effort to censor reporting on the contents of the laptop and instead push Democrat claims it was just 'Russian election disinformation' just before the 2020 election.^[27]

Media appearances[edit]

She appeared in the documentary The Social Dilemma and is a contributor at Wired and The Atlantic.^[11]

She appeared on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.^[28]

Literature[edit]

• The Hardware Startup: Building your Product, Business, and Brand (2015)^[29]
• Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality (2024)^[30]

See also[edit]

• Twitter files

References[edit]