Leaked State Dept Memo Reveals US Gov’t Used Taxpayer Money to Create Online Game to “Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation”

The US government is using taxpayers’ money to create a video game as a “psychological vaccination against fake news,” according to a leaked State Department memo obtained by America First Legal (AFL) and reviewed by Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO).

The State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) released a memo on October 31, 2022, with the subject line “Cat Park: A New Online Game to Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation,” which describes a plan to launch a new tax-funded online game.

“The Global Engagement Center (GEC) and U.S. Embassy The Hague are pleased to announce the launch of a new online counter-disinformation game, Cat Park (https://catpark.game/),” the memo reads.

“Cat Park builds on the success of the first game funded by GEC, Harmony Square. Cat Park inoculates players against real-world disinformation by showing how sensational headlines, memes, and manipulated media can be used to advance conspiracy theories and incite real-world violence. The game, available now in English, Dutch, French, and Russian (with more language versions to come based on post requests), helps players discern between reliable and unreliable information,” according to the summary of the memo.

The Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) provided a rundown of the game’s concepts in a series of tweets.

NEW: Leaked State Dept memo obtained by America First Legal reveals US gov’t is producing VIDEO GAMES with taxpayer dollars for “psychological vaccination against fake news.”

Their plan is to stop populism on social media. Full report here:https://t.co/Yc8IxrdHfv

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 18, 2022

The leaked memo shows the US gov’t tapping into the virality of Buzzfeed-style cat videos to program young people’s political opinions through a new video game called “Cat Park”:

Cat Park is the second game designed by the Global Engagement Center (GEC) of the U.S. State Department to fight “political misinformation.”

Below is the government promo video for GEC’s 1st game, Harmony Square, rolled out just after the 2020 US election:

3. Cat Park is the 2nd video game produced by the State Dept’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) targeting “political misinformation.”

Here is the government promo video for GEC’s 1st game, Harmony Square, rolled out just after the 2020 US election: pic.twitter.com/R1rDR82q4j

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 18, 2022

Ahead of elections around the world, the US gov’t plans to roll out its new psychology-manipulating video games like Cat Park as a “disinformation booster-shot,” stopping social media and ideological support for populist movements, such as the UK’s Brexit movement:

“Cat Park” is based on psychological behavior modification research from Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making.

5. The US-gov’t developed game “Cat Park” is based on psychological behavior modification research from the University of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

Here, Cambridge’s star “disinfo” professor make clear their targets are populist movements in the US and UK: pic.twitter.com/nuVUydmKhw

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 18, 2022

7. This same Cambridge professor, Sander van der Linden, did “psychological resistance” testing on US government-produced behavioral modification game Harmony Square (Cat Park’s predecessor), which sought to modify people’s beliefs in “political misinformation” during elections: pic.twitter.com/IYUccbD3DS

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 18, 2022

9. Here, the US government’s private sector deputy explains how they are moving from a reactive censorship model reliant on “fact-checking” and “debunking” to proactive censorship model built on “cognitive vaccination” and “prebunking.”

This is the science of censorship: pic.twitter.com/UWcr75Hugp

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 18, 2022

The leaked State Dept memo shows that censorship scientists calculate that playing “Cat Park” makes young people “15 percentage points” less likely to share populist opinions online.

11. And here it must be stressed: the Cat Park game is not really about disinformation. It really is just about populism. Virtually single act of “disinformation” in the game is simply an expression of populists airing grievances against government waste, fraud and abuse: pic.twitter.com/yUw1GbqVCj

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 18, 2022

State Dept officials plan to embed Cat Park as deeply into civil society as possible. Ambassadors are to play the game with “popular influencers, academics, journalists and government officials.”

Youth networks, exchange programs, ministries of education, all roped in:

In an oblivious self-realization of George Orwell’s novel 1984, at one point in Cat Park, this gov’t-made video game to “stop disinformation” labels memes that compare the gov’t to 1984 as disinformation:

Other “disinformation headlines” you are forced to apologize for in this government-made video game include complaints that the government is spending too much money on elites and not enough on basic needs like building roads:

15. In our full report, you can see the systematic anti-populist biases of the censorship scientists that the US government has partnered with here:https://t.co/Yc8IxrdHfv pic.twitter.com/CQxb2KZ1WO

— Foundation For Freedom Online (@FFO_Freedom) November 19, 2022

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