Cybersecurity for Democracy partnerships
Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) partners with civil society and non-governmental organizations, coalition networks, universities and other groups on research, policy development and cybersecurity awareness. C4D supports partners with tools, research findings, and data relevant to the most serious problems affecting communities targeted for misinformation, hate online, and the exploitation of online platform vulnerabilities. Past and current partners include:
The Virality Project - The partnership encompasses a coalition of research entities focused on supporting real-time information exchange between the research community, public health officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, and social media platforms on COVID-19 vaccine disinformation. The coalition includes:
- Stanford Internet Observatory,
- University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public
- New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics and Tandon School of Engineering
- Graphika
- National Conference on Citizenship
A Standard for Universal Digital Ad Transparency - Academic research paper, published by Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and a collaboration among educational institutions and a non-profit organization analyzing existing digital ad transparency efforts, the proposal of a technical standard with defined criteria and technical details, the comparison of the proposed standard to current voluntary transparency efforts, and current pending legislation in the United States and the potential problems with the proposal, and potential mitigations. Collaborators include researchers from:
Audit of Facebook’s Political Ad Policy Enforcement - Researchers with imec-DistriNet at KU Leuven in Belgium and C4D conducted a comprehensive audit of Facebook’s political ad detection and policy enforcement. The researchers examined 33.8 million Facebook ads that ran between July 2020 and February 202—a timeframe that included elections in both the U.S. and Brazil. This is the first known study to quantify the performance of Facebook’s political ad policy enforcement system at a large and representative scale. Among several findings, the researchers found that globally, Facebook made the wrong decision for 83 percent of ads that had not been declared as political by their advertisers.
Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition - C4D is a member of the nationwide coalition of Latino groups and ally organizations - led by the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
Disinfo Defense League - C4D is a member of the rapid response network designed to disrupt disinformation and voter suppression campaigns deliberately targeting the intersections of Black, Afro-Latinx, Latinx, Indigenous, and immigrant communities.
Ad Observatory - In 2020, C4D partnered with the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington; Open Secrets; and Poynter to produce Ad Observatory, a public website that provided insights and data on political messaging on Facebook, and to train journalists how to use it.