Part 2/16:
Over the past nine months, key government agencies and initiatives responsible for censorship have been dismantled or significantly restructured. In February, the United States International Development (USID) was formally shut down, after years of funneling tens of millions of dollars annually into organizations, technologies, and institutions dedicated to censorship—particularly targeting social media platforms and academic centers.
Similarly, the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC), originally created to counter ISIS propaganda, was repurposed during the 2016 election but has now been abolished. The GEC's $60-million annual budget and extensive full-time staff contributed to authoritarian-style information control, but that too is now history.