The United States on Wednesday eliminated a key government agency that tracked foreign disinformation, framing the move as an effort to preserve “free speech.”The closure of the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub, previously known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), comes as leading experts monitoring propaganda have been raising the alarm about the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.In December, just weeks ahead of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the US Congress failed to extend the agency’s funding following years of Republican allegations that it censored conservative views.In a statement on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the unit, saying it was the responsibility of government officials to “preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech.””Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio said. “That ends today.”The announcement comes at a time when the State Department is expected to propose an unprecedented dismantling of Washington’s diplomatic reach, shuttering programs and embassies worldwide to slash the budget by almost 50 percent, according to US media.The GEC, established in 2016, had long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who accused it of censoring and surveilling Americans. Its closing leaves the State Department without a dedicated office for tracking and countering disinformation from US rivals for the first time in over eight years.The unit has also come under fire from billionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk, who accused the GEC in 2023 of being the “worst offender in US government censorship (and) media manipulation” and called the agency a “threat to our democracy.”Musk has overseen the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with radically reducing government spending.The GEC’s former leaders have pushed back on those views, calling their work crucial to combating foreign propaganda campaigns.Last June, James Rubin, special envoy and coordinator for the GEC at the time, announced the launch of a multinational group based in Warsaw to counter Russian disinformation on the war in neighboring Ukraine.The State Department had said that the initiative, known as the Ukraine Communications Group, would bring together partner governments to coordinate messaging, promote accurate reporting of the war and expose Kremlin information manipulation.In a previous report, the GEC also warned that China was spending billions of dollars globally to spread disinformation and threatening to cause a “sharp contraction” in freedom of speech around the world.

TikTok on Wednesday said it is testing a feature that would let people add “Footnotes” providing informative context to videos that might be misleading.The feature being tested in the United States, where the short-form video sharing app has some 170 million users, appears similar to Community Notes on X, formerly Twitter.Unlike X though, TikTok will continue its own fact-checking program to fight misinformation, head of operations Adam Presser said in a blog post.”Footnotes will draw on the collective knowledge of the TikTok community by allowing people to add relevant information to content on our platform,” Presser said.”It will add to our suite of measures that help people understand the reliability of content and access authoritative sources, including our content labels, search banners, our fact-checking program, and more.”Adult US users who have been on TikTok for more than six months and haven’t violated its community guidelines were invited to apply to contribute to Footnotes.Contributors will also be able to rate Footnotes left by other people.Footnotes deemed as “helpful” will be made visible on TikTok, at which point any users can vote on them as feedback regarding their merit, according to Presser.”Whether the content discusses a complex STEM-related concept, shares statistics that could misrepresent a topic, or updates about an ongoing event, there may be additional context that could help others better understand it,” Presser said.”That’s why we’re building Footnotes.”Footnotes will augment TikTok’s existing integrity measures such as labeling content that can’t be verified and partnering with fact-checking organizations such as AFP to assess the accuracy of posts on the platform.Meta early this year ended its third-party fact-checking program in the United States, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg saying it had led to “too much censorship.”As an alternative, Zuckerberg said Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, would use “Community Notes,” similar to the Elon Musk-owned X.Community Notes is a crowd-sourced moderation tool that X has promoted as a way for users to add context to posts, but researchers have repeatedly questioned its effectiveness in combating falsehoods.Supporters of President Donald Trump, among others, have contended without proof that conservative voices were being censored or stifled under the guise of fighting misinformation, a claim professional fact-checkers vehemently reject.TikTok is adding Footnotes as its China-based parent company ByteDance faces a deadline to sell the app or have it banned in the United States.Trump has said there was a deal on the sale of TikTok, but tariffs recently imposed by Washington on Beijing derailed it.ByteDance, while confirming recently that it was in talks with the US government on finding a solution, warned that there remained “key matters” to resolve.

The uncertainty kicked up by Donald Trump’s stop-start tariff rollout will undoubtedly hit growth, the president of the World Bank said Wednesday, ahead of next week’s semi-annual meeting of global financial leaders in Washington.”Uncertainty and volatility are undoubtedly contributing to a more cautious economic and business environment,” Ajay Banga told reporters, alluding to the market turbulence unleashed by the new US administration’s tariff policy. This uncertainty would “certainly” cause slower growth than previously anticipated, he added during the virtual event. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Spring Meetings kick off on Monday, with the Bank keen to promote its agenda to drive job creation in developing and emerging market economies. But the gathering of finance ministers and central bankers will take place against a challenging international backdrop, with US President Donald Trump’s tariff policy threatening to derail economic growth in many parts of the world.Since taking office in January, the US president has imposed 25 percent levies on several sectors including, autos, steel and aluminum, as his administration seeks to redress what it says is an unfair trading relationship with the rest of the world. The White House also imposed a new “baseline” tariff of 10 percent on most countries, and announced higher import taxes on dozens of trading partners, only to then temporarily roll many of them back. China — America’s third-largest trading partner — has been hit with a barrage of new tariffs totalling 145 percent overall. Beijing, in turn, has announced retaliatory tariffs of 125 percent on US goods.- ‘The right questions’ – The United States is the top shareholder at the World Bank Group, and has historically been a key driver of policy at the Washington-based institution, which has been led by a US citizen for most of its history.Shortly before leaving office, Joe Biden’s administration committed the United States to $4 billion in new funding for the World Bank’s agency that leverages donor funds to provide loans and grants to some of the world’s poorest countries. The Trump administration has so far refused to commit to that $4 billion figure, raising questions about how much money it plans to contribute to the World Bank and other international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Speaking on Wednesday, Banga indicated that the Bank would make do with a smaller budget if the United States did not provide funding at the same level as before, but that he still hoped Washington would come around. “We’re having a constructive dialogue with the US administration,” he said. “I don’t know where it’ll end, but I’ve got no problem with the dialogue I’m having.””They’re asking the right questions, and we’re trying to give them the right answers,” he added. – Nuclear, gas financing -Donald Trump has a long public record questioning the impact of man-made climate change. Since his return to office, concerns have been raised that his administration’s view on climate change could hit the World Bank, which has committed to increasing its climate finance portfolio to 45 percent of total lending. Banga told reporters on Wednesday that, while “the words might be a problem in different people’s eyes,” the Bank’s climate actual commitments should be less controversial. “We are not taking away from education and schools and development to fund something,” he said. “What’s inside the 45 (percent) is a commitment that half of it, over time, will go to resiliency and adaptation.”Banga also suggested that the Bank could soon take another look at funding nuclear and natural gas energy projects — something that would require approval from donor countries. “There is no reason why a country in Africa should not care about affordable, accessible electricity,” he said. “And it includes gas, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, wind and nuclear where it makes sense,” he added.