but what i didn't imagine was that i would need protection from harvard itself. >> and donie o'sullivan joins us now. what is the status of the doctor's research. >> reporter: so, dr. donovan now is working at boston university. but a big part of her problem is a lot of the research she did at harvard is locked in at harvard, and a lot of that data. as you heard, in that piece, meta, which has a very substantial communications department, had no comment on this story today, which was quite unusual for a company that likes to defend itself. the chan-zuckerberg initiative, which gave half a billion dollars to harvard, just in the past hour put out a statement saying they had no involvement in dr. donovan's departure from harvard and was unaware of that development before public reporting on it. harvard is strongly, strongly denying this. i will say from speaking to other researchers in this space, this is a, kind of -- they weren't entirely surprised when they heard this about dr. donovan. and just taking a step back further from this, this is all comes as we're going to 2024. disinformat

what i did not imagine was that i would need protection from harvard itself. >> donie o'sullivan joins us now. what is the status of the doctors? research >> doctor joan donovan now is working at the boston university, but a big part of her problem is a lot of the research she did at harvard is locked in at harvard. a lot of that data. as you heard in that piece, meta, which has a very substantial communications department, had no comment on this sry today, which is quite unusual for a company that lets defendtself. the chan zuckerberg initiative which gave half a billion dollars to harvard into just the past two hours put out a statement that said they had no involvement in her doctor -- from harvard and was unaware of that development before public report. look, harvard is strongly denying this i will say speaking to other researchers in the space, this is a kind of, they were not entirely surprised when they heard this about doctor joan donovan. taking a step back further from this, this is all coming as we are going into 2024. disinformation researchers, people who are calling out

a correspondent donie o'sullivan all over this story and covering it now. quite an accusation. >> this is serious. dr. joan donna van is pretty much one of the biggest names in this important space of disinformation research and especially as we go into an election year next year. really just how these social media platforms are affecting our lives, our perception of reality and our perception of politics. so the timeline is like this, she said that there are former facebook people and influential people at facebook who have different connections to harvard, whether they were graduates or involved in the university in some way and of course there is this half a billion dollars from the zuckerberg chan foundation which she says essentially got her forced out of the university and shut her research down. we should of course mention that her research was of course quite critical of facebook. >> has there been a response? facebook usually will be very aggressive in these moments. facebook, harvard, are they saying anything? >> no word back from meta this mornin

. >> "the washington post's" drew harwell, "the new york times's" ryan mac, and cnn's donie o'sullivanwitter's blocking spree. >> he shuts down any journalist who had referred to or linked to elonjet. and it made no sense. it really was a violation of this notion of free speech. >> jacoby: soon musk was prohibiting users from posting links to rival sites, as well. >> twitter suspending accounts of upstart rival service mastodon... >> this all comes one month after musk proclaimed he wanted twitter to be a place of free speech and would grant "amnesty" to all previously banned accounts and reinstate them. >> i thought that was hypocritical. the idea that elon is some kind of hero against doxing, takes some kind of stand against publishing people's personal information, is complete and total nonsense. >> jacoby: reporter linette lopez, who'd been attacked by musk and his followers before, took to twitter with her criticism. within a day, she, too, found herself locked out with no explanation. >> i always say that elon is a law-and-order guy as long as he writes the laws and gives the ord