By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

The author of the “Disinformation Dozen” list of 12 “leading online anti-vaxxers” — which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others who publicly questioned vaccine safety — credited the work of “disinformation researchers” for recent regulations and judicial verdicts targeting social media platforms.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), last month told attendees of the Cambridge Disinformation Summit that legal attacks on disinformation researchers create a “chilling effect” on those researchers and their work.

Ahmed is currently facing deportation from the U.S. for targeting public figures — including Kennedy and others on the “Disinformation Dozen” list — and pressuring social media platforms to censor free speech.

Ahmed didn’t mention vaccines during his speech at the Cambridge summit. Instead, he made frequent references to online “systems” that “amplify harmful content” and “generate it on demand, personally tailored at the moment of greatest vulnerability.”

Ahmed credited summit attendees  — largely disinformation researchers — with passing the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, which holds online platforms liable for users’ “harmful” speech.

He also told attendees that they deserve some credit for recent fines levied against social media platforms, and for court rulings holding online platforms responsible for alleged harms to kids.

“The work of this room does not merely describe reality,” Ahmed said. “Increasingly, it is what forces reality to change. The evidence you produce is the foundation on which everything else depends. Without it, there is no legislation, litigation or enforcement. … You are not watching this fight from a distance. You are the reason it exists.”

Still, more action is needed because democratic processes are too slow to respond to a rapidly shifting online environment, Ahmed said.

He added:

“A platform can change an algorithm overnight and alter what hundreds of millions of people see. A regulatory investigation takes years. The information revolution moves at the speed of code. Democratic accountability moves at the speed of committee.

“We cannot match their speed. So, we must create consequences severe enough to change the calculation before the harm is done.”

CCDH ‘central actor in the censorship-industrial complex’

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), called Ahmed’s call for “severe” consequences for disfavored online speech unsurprising. She said:

“Ahmed’s Center for Countering Digital Hate was a central actor in the censorship-industrial complex that specifically defamed and sought to censor CHD’s founder, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and CHD.

“Ahmed himself is a prominent advocate for censorship and government control over information and media. His views and activities are anathema to the First Amendment.”

Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo — also named to the “Disinformation Dozen” list — described Ahmed’s talk as revelatory and “candid,” likening it to “a description of a supply chain.”

“The research is the raw material,” Ji said. “Legislation, litigation and enforcement are the finished products. [Ahmed] has confirmed this was never a neutral inquiry into how information moves online. It was the manufacture of pretexts for state and judicial action against disfavored speech.”

Telecommunications attorney Scott McCollough agreed. He said the manner in which Ahmed and CCDH define terms such as “democracy” matters, and that it is premised on the idea that they have “some divine right to unilaterally decide what is ‘true.’”

“Those words mean something different to Ahmed and CCDH than they do to normal people,” McCollough said. “For most folks, ‘democracy’ means majority rule, expressed through fair elections free of interference. But to this cohort, it means a system where they always win, no matter what the majority thinks or even how they vote.”

Soon after the “Disinformation Dozen” list went live, social media giants began deplatforming some of them. Key Biden administration officials publicly referenced the list and its members, accusing them of spreading dangerous “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

CCDH is now the subject of a congressional investigation. Ahmed has been linked to key U.K. government officials, including some with ties to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The U.S. State Department ordered Ahmed’s deportation from the U.S. in December 2025, which he is now challenging in court.

Ahmed ‘wants to be the gatekeeper of truth’

Ahmed referenced the deportation proceedings against him during his talk, saying they are “unconstitutional” and result in a “chilling effect.”

“My attorneys have warned that if I leave the U.S., I would not be allowed to return — to my home, to my wife, to my two daughters, one 19 months old, the other 5 weeks old,” Ahmed said. “And what was my crime? Advocacy. Holding powerful companies to account. Sometimes embarrassing them by exposing their own failures. Being good at it.”

Ahmed views these challenges as a sign of success. “I read the events of the past few years, not as a story of setback but as a story of progress. In 2019, I founded CCDH to do what platforms and lawmakers could not or would not do: speak truth to power in defense of truth, science and democracy.”

Ben Tapper, a Nebraska chiropractor who was also on the “Disinformation Dozen” list, said Ahmed’s talk played on emotion to hide “an ulterior motive.”

“There is no doubt he has a silver tongue and the ability to win over the hearts and minds of the people, especially when he claims he is the victim,” Tapper said. “What Ahmed has done and continues to do is erode those precious freedoms so many have fought for. He is part of a bigger agenda. He continues to call for digital control … and wants to be the gatekeeper of truth.”

Efforts to protect kids from harmful online content — a pretext for censorship?

Documents leaked in 2024 revealed that CCDH pushed for a U.S. social media censorship law akin to the U.K.’s Online Safety Act and the European Union’s Digital Services Act. In his talk last month, Ahmed celebrated efforts to promote similar legislation in the U.S.

“Lawmakers across the country are trying to apply the same standards of care to social media companies as are expected of every other powerful industry,” Ahmed said. “That is not a fad. That’s a structural shift.”

Ahmed credited successful legal challenges to social media platforms using the principle of consumer harm for holding those platforms accountable for hosting “harmful” speech. He said:

“Two weeks ago, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for knowingly harming children’s mental health and concealing what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. The very next day, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and YouTube negligent for designing products that harmed children. That case is a bellwether for thousands more. …

“On the same day as the New Mexico verdict, Baltimore became the first major American city to sue xAI over harms tied to Grok, explicitly citing evidence produced by CCDH.”

Ahmed said courts are “now asking a question that would’ve been unthinkable five years ago: Did the design of this product cause this harm?”

But Ji said that what’s underlying the verdicts that appear to protect children from online harm is an effort to control public speech more broadly.

“Once a government can compel a platform to suppress ‘harmful’ content, the definition of harm becomes the most valuable real estate in politics — and it never stops expanding,” Ji said. “Children deserve real protection — not a starring role as the emotional pretext for a censorship architecture that will outlast all of us.”

Related articles in The Defender

• The ‘Disinformation Dozen’: Targeted by Government, Maligned by Media. Where Are They Today?
• UK Activist Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Faces Possible U.S. Deportation
• Group Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Sought to ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter,’ Launch ‘Black Ops’ Against RFK Jr.
• Mastermind Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ List Took Money From Foundation Linked to Soros
• Congressional Investigation into Authors of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Intensifies
• Stanford Under Investigation for Secret Scheme to Help Foreign Governments Censor Americans

The post Architect of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Praises ‘Disinformation Researchers’ for New Laws Targeting Online Speech appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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