Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert and CEO at the American Sunlight Project, during an interview with AFP in Washington, DC, on March 23, 2023.
Bastien Inzaurralde | AFP | Getty Images
Nina Jankowicz’s dream job has turned into a nightmare.
For the past 10 years, she’s been a disinformation researcher, studying and analyzing the spread of Russian propaganda and internet conspiracy theories. In 2022, she was appointed to the White House’s Disinformation Governance Board, which was created to help the Department of Homeland Security fend off online threats.
Now, Jankowicz’s life is filled with government inquiries, lawsuits and a barrage of harassment, all the result of an extreme level of hostility directed at people whose mission is to safeguard the internet, particularly ahead of presidential elections.
Jankowicz, the mother of a toddler, says her anxiety has run so high, in part due to death threats, that she recently had a dream that a stranger broke into her house with a gun. She threw a punch in …