A report released on Friday shows that the Biden administration spent over a quarter billion dollars studying and policing “misinformation.”

OpenTheBooks is a watchdog of federal spending. It said that the federal government spent $267 millions since 2021 for contracts and grants containing the word “misinformation”. Misinformation grants cost $7 million during the Trump administration.

This is a 44-fold rise in spending during the presidency of Biden, in a field where even experts are divided on what misinformation and its cousins disinformation and malinformation mean.

A large portion of Mr. Biden’s spending went to studying information on the coronavirus, and Americans’ responses to the pandemic. The government also attempted to combat misinformation through a broader range of programs. A U.S. University received nearly $250,000 for the construction of “escape rooms” in libraries to combat misinformation.

OpenTheBooks said that this is a foolish errand.

The federal government has shown that it cannot address this need in a responsible manner. The group’s report said that it was the worst possible arbiter for truth because it made the state the gatekeeper of speech.

OpenTheBooks analyzed spending going back to fiscal 2017 which roughly corresponds with the beginning of Donald Trump’s first tenure in office.

The total expenditure was $274 million, with less than $500k in the first year. And no more than 3 million dollars in the three subsequent years under President Trump.

In 2021, after Mr. Biden assumed office, misinformation spending increased dramatically, reaching $126 million, primarily on pandemic-related initiatives. The amount has been steadily decreasing but reached $18 million during the fiscal year just ended.

The majority of COVID-19 funding went to Health and Human Services Department initiatives to increase vaccine use and to other government-recommended measures for racial and ethnic minorities. This includes “evidence based interventions to combat vaccine misinformation.”

HHS authorized grants to pay for outfits that monitor social media sites for information about vaccines and other medical issues that contradict the department’s preferred narratives.

The National Science Foundation gave $200,000 to researchers for the study of how political polarization makes people more susceptible to misinformation. OpenTheBooks reported that the paper was “slandering Trump, President-elect.”

The authors concluded by saying that governments should “allow experts to have the primary say” when responding to health crises.

They called on governments to adopt the same expert-based approach when policing climate change information.

OpenTheBooks alleged that many efforts were hypocritical after initial claims regarding social distance and the risk of the virus for younger people proved to be inaccurate.

Analysts also raise questions about the effectiveness in policing social media conversations with a heavy hand, which prompted even more resistance against what agencies were encouraging.

OpenTheBooks stated that “Americans cannot trust that the continued grant and contracts spending, and other bureaucratic activities involving’misinformation,’ will not be motivated by an ideological motive to silence critics.”

NSF funded projects that include a “misinformation hotline” and Fact Champ which investigates “racially-targeted misinformation.”

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has paid $249,691 for the University of Washington to create misinformation escape rooms in libraries.

Researchers said that they co-designed and studied the effects of escape room for increasing awareness of misleading techniques, encouraging reflection about emotional and cognitive biases and changing people’s attitude and social media behavior when engaging with problematic content.

The Department of Homeland Security spent $1.2m on a contract to Guidehouse for the analysis of “misinformation” and “disinformation”. This contract started in September 2023.

In its efforts to combat the problem, the government has been criticized in public.

Homeland Security was forced to dissolve its Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, just a few years after Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had announced the formation of the board. This was due to troubling questions regarding the panel’s mandate.

The Biden administration continues to fight allegations that government agencies unfairly pressed social media companies into censoring posts contradicting government narratives about the COVID-19 epidemic and acceptable medical treatment options.

John Hart, CEO at OpenTheBooks, warned the government against becoming an information police.

He said that the best way to combat “misinformation” is not with more mandates, but with greater transparency, more knowledge and more speech. “Our founders knew that the best way for the public to rid itself of falsehood was by increasing the amount of speech.