Maybe someone already pointed this out but the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Internet Observatory is/was Jeff Hancock, who I guess failed upward from Cornell where he co-authored the infamous Facebook emotional contagion study.

In 2015 he gave a talk at D&S defending the paper and himself w/"wow ppl didn't know FB manipulates things, how strange"

I don't mention this as a conspiratorial accusation re: SIO's closure, just a funny overlap