VILNIUS, Lithuania, September 2, 2025 — Project 4β, a pro bono initiative by Oxylabs, is proud to announce its collaboration with new members, including Doublethink Lab, InSight Crime, CeMAS, The Data and Research Center, and Le French News Lab. These partnerships reflect the initiative’s commitment to supporting research and organizations, working toward public good, with web intelligence collection tools needed to uncover hidden truths, track disinformation, and inform the public on critical global issues.
Julius Černiauskas, CEO of Oxylabs, welcomed the new collaborations, saying: “At Oxylabs, we believe that access to reliable web intelligence should empower those who protect democracy, expose wrongdoing, and create lasting societal impact. Project 4β is our way of giving back to the global research and journalism communities, and we’re proud to welcome such impactful organizations to the program.”
Countering Disinformation and Propaganda
Project 4β partnered with Doublethink Lab, a non-profit, civil society organization based in Taiwan. One of its core missions is to strengthen the resilience of democratic societies against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). Established in 2019, the organization brings together expertise in social, behavioral, and computational sciences to track propaganda, psychological warfare, and authoritarian influence operations.
Through Project 4β, Doublethink Lab uses Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API and Residential Proxies to enhance its ability to monitor disinformation ecosystems and identify emerging threats. Tim Niven, Deputy CEO of Doublethink Lab, noted:
“Democracies are under extreme pressure from information manipulation. Civil society confronts a tough strategic landscape as cynical actors deliberately erect barriers to threat monitoring. At this crucial moment in history, Oxylabs’ generous support enables us to overcome barriers to data access, allowing us to detect and counter information threats to our democracies.”
Partnering to Uncover Organized Crime in the Americas
4β also welcomed InSight Crime, a think tank and media organization that combines investigative journalism with academic rigor to study organized crime and citizen security in the Americas. Building on extensive ground research and a network of regional experts, the organization provides reporting, analysis, and policy recommendations to better understand and address the challenges criminal groups pose to societies.
By joining Project 4β, InSight Crime now gains free access to Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API and Residential Proxies, expanding its ability to collect and analyze large-scale datasets. Steven Dudley, Co-director of InSight Crime, said:
“InSight Crime is excited to partner with Oxylabs, which is helping us do the vital research and investigations around the key threat in the Americas: organized crime. With Oxylabs’ assistance, we are pushing the boundaries of the conventional understanding of criminal groups and gangs and the way they impact societies across the region.”
Monitoring Extremism and Disinformation
The initiative also partnered with the Center for Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategy (CeMAS), based in Germany, a nonprofit which brings interdisciplinary expertise on conspiracy ideologies, disinformation, antisemitism, and right-wing extremism, working at the interface of science, journalism, and society to provide innovative analyses and actionable recommendations.
With Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API, CeMAS strengthens its monitoring of extremist mobilisation, particularly by tracking threats around Pride events in Germany and documenting how far-right groups attempt to influence public spaces and discourse.
Equipping Journalists With Scalable Data Tools
Among the new partners is the Data and Research Center (DARC), an independent organization offering bespoke research and data services for investigative teams. With its open-source platform OpenAleph, DARC helps make investigations faster, more efficient, and tailored to specific needs.
DARC leverages Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API and Residential Proxies to streamline access to critical information. Jan Strozyk, Director for Data and Journalism Projects at DARC, explained:
“Accessing information on the internet in bulk – even information that should be publicly available – is becoming harder and harder. We’re happy to be part of the 4β program and streamline our processes with the help of Oxylabs.”
Innovating Media Research Frameworks
Le French News Lab, a research center committed to transparent and rigorous media research, joined Project 4β to advance comparative studies of news and media. Their current research aims to develop the first transparent, reproducible framework for identifying and classifying national news outlets in France – a methodological breakthrough that addresses long-standing gaps in comparative media studies and democratic discourse.
The partnership with Oxylabs provides the Web Scraper API to gather longitudinal data from diverse sources, enabling robust, data-driven analysis. Amr Sobhy, Founder & Director of Le French News Lab, shared:
“Conducting comparative studies in news and media requires collecting and analyzing large-scale datasets produced by a wide array of news sources over extended periods. Oxylabs’ tools enable us to efficiently gather this longitudinal data, allowing the Le French News Lab team to spend less time on the technical complexities of data collection and more time on core research and analysis. This partnership directly enhances our ability to deliver robust, data-driven insights into the evolution of media and news patterns.”
Invitation to join 4β
Project 4β has already forged partnerships with dozens of organizations, including Bellingcat, Global Witness, the Environmental Protection Department of Lithuania, and members from academic institutions, such as Stanford University and Northwestern University, to name a few.
Oxylabs extends its invitation to academia, researchers, NGOs and other organizations working towards public good to join the pro bono program and get free access to Oxylabs’ know-how and robust web intelligence collection solutions.
About Oxylabs
Established in 2015, Oxylabs is a web intelligence platform and premium proxy provider, enabling companies of all sizes to utilise the power of big data. Constant innovation, an extensive patent portfolio, and a focus on ethics have allowed Oxylabs to become a global leader in the web intelligence collection industry and forge close ties with dozens of Fortune Global 500 companies. Oxylabs was named Europe’s fastest-growing web intelligence acquisition company in the Financial Times FT 1000 list for several consecutive years. For more information, please visit: https://oxylabs.io/
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