A major disinformation research team's future is uncertain after political attacks

The Stanford Internet Observatory, a prominent research group at Stanford University studying how social media platforms are abused, has lost its top leadership and faces an uncertain future amid a sustained right-wing campaign targeting the study of online falsehoods.

The SIO's founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November, and in recent weeks, the university did not renew the contract of Renée DiResta, the group's research manager, along with other staffers. Remaining staff have been told to look for other jobs, according to the tech newsletter Platformer, which first reported the news.

The SIO was founded five years ago as a cross-disciplinary program examining some of the thorniest issues raised by the proliferation of the internet, including the way social networks such as Instagram are used for child exploitation and the spread of false and misleading information about elections and vaccines.

But in the past year, the work of researchers at SIO and other institutions studying viral falsehoods and their impact on democracy have become the focus of scrutiny by Republicans in the courts and in Congress, who allege their work amounts to censorship.

The Election Integrity Partnership, a joint project SIO ran with the University of Washington to track false and misleading information about the 2020 and 2022 elections, became the focus of conspiracy theories that it was a front for the government to suppress speech it didn't like.

As a result, researchers at Stanford, UW, and other institutions have been hit with lawsuits, flooded with subpoenas and document requests, and subjected to online harassment and attacks.

That's added up to millions of dollars in legal fees and significant amounts of time