And some may have thought we were kidding or overreacting when criticizing Big Tech and its silencing of opposing viewpoints. If anything, we may have underestimated the weaponization of Big Tech platforms. In a blockbuster series of reports, the Washington Examiner reveals that Microsoft has partnered with a leftist group that creates “secret blacklists” to deamplify conservative websites and prevent them from gaining value for advertising.

Gabe Kaminsky reveals this in Part 3 of his Disinformation Inc series, which exposes how the “disinformation” craze is justifying censorship and political blacklisting:

A advertising company owned by Microsoft that subscribes to a left-leaning “disinformation” group’s secret blacklist for conservative media outlets has been internally flagging right-leaning websites and taking steps to defund and deplatform them, according to records obtained by the Washington Examiner and whistleblowers in the advertising industry.

The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding secret blacklists to ad companies, such as Xandr , with the intent of shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation.” Now, sets of documents and emails leaked to the Washington Examiner shed light on how Xandr, which Microsoft bought in 2021 for $1 billion, has targeted disfavored speech and blocked conservative websites from reaping key ad dollars. …

GDI’s “dynamic exclusion list” includes at least 2,000 domains, many of which are “foreign state-sponsored news and opinion sites, forums that traffic in disinformation, and explicitly sanctioned websites,” according to a second source close to Microsoft. Each month, GDI sends Xandr a list of websites on this blacklist, said the source.

It’s not all foreign actors, bots, and trolls, as Kaminsky shows. The blacklist includes nearly a who’s-who of American conservative platforms – including HotAir and our sister sites Twitchy, RedState, and Townhall:

Some websites flagged as "false/misleading" included @dcexaminer @realDailyWire @RealClearNews @NEWSMAX @BreitbartNews @theblaze + @JudicialWatch

What this means is that Xandr slashed ad dollars from these websites based on the idea that their spreading disinfo pic.twitter.com/yhL2F2lXSz

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 10, 2023

Matt Vespa has already declared Townhall’s pronouns to be “Reprehensible/Offensive.” We’re about to hold a crisis meeting to find out why Bearing Arms isn’t on this list, however. Clearly, Cam Edwards had better start trying harder. I kid, I kid … 

On a more serious note, this is clearly an offensively unserious attack on opinion and commentary. Just the use of “reprehensible/offensive” as a category – for Townhall, of all places – shows that this isn’t about facts, it’s about taste. Microsoft and GDI are using these ratings to marginalize viewpoints they don’t like by claiming them to be “false/misleading” or “hate speech,” in Breitbart’s case.

What was published that was false or misleading? Provide the citation. And why were we not contacted by these organizations to at least have a chance to dispute these assessments and find out the rational basis for them? Why, in fact, was this effort kept secret at all?

This is not an honest effort to improve discourse. It’s a McCarthyist tactic to pretend that only one set of views has any legitimacy – and to prevent anyone from challenging the elite “consensus” on policy, culture, or values.

If you want to see just how dishonest and shabby this effort truly is, take a look at GDI’s “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in the United States.” This is filled with nonsense about how unbiased GDI is in its methodology while never noting that it hasn’t even bothered to ask these platforms about their content. They conclude that the least “risky” platforms include NPR, the Washington Post, and The New York Times, who all blew both the Hunter Biden laptop story and the Russia collusion story. It also includes BuzzFeed, which was the first to publish the discredited Steele dossier that started all of that bad reporting.

And then take a look at its selection of the riskiest online news outlets. It includes RealClearPolitics, which aggregates opinion from both the Left and the Right as well as produces their own reporting and content. It also cites the New York Post, which got the Hunter Biden laptop story correct. Opinion sites like Daily Wire, The Blaze, and Federalist also make the list.

Most egregiously, however, this also includes the libertarian magazine Reason. GDI assesses Reason to have a “high” risk level because “the site publishes no information regarding authorship attribution, pre-publication fact-checking or post-publication corrections processes, or policies to prevent
disinformation in its comments section.” Reason is one of the smartest, well-edited libertarian-oriented publications and has been for decades. I sometimes disagree with their arguments and positions, but I have never read anything that counts as “disinformation” or dishonesty.

If your risk list gives high marks to BuzzFeed for credibility and freaks out at Reason, you’ve gone way off the rails.

Needless to say, this effort by Big Tech is having an impact on dissent and debate in online spaces. This effort clearly intends to starve opposing viewpoints out of the marketplace, using the current social panic over “disinformation” to manipulate platforms and advertisers. And frankly, it’s likely to work, at least in the short run, as the efforts will no doubt continue – and mainstream media outlets will refuse to cover this McCarthyist tactic.

This is why we have created a model that allows us to work around Big Tech and advertiser issues with our VIP and VIP Gold programs. And now that everyone can see that our sites have been targeted by the elites, it’s more important than ever to keep reminding people that they can push back by joining our efforts.

Today, we have launched a new promo code for this specific mission. Use CENSORSHIP to get 50% off our VIP and VIP Gold memberships. Click this link to subscribe now, and help us to keep fighting.