It’s a win. It might only prove temporary, but it’s still a win for now.

Last week, the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky exposed secret blacklists of conservative sites created by the “Global Disinformation Index.” Those blacklists included Hot Air, Townhall, RedState, and Twitchy, and lots of other conservative sites under the ambiguous guise of “disinformation.” No one from GDI or its sponsors ever bothered to contact us to discuss their “assessment,” nor did their reports ever cite any specific data for any of the sites blacklisted, despite a lengthy yet completely data-free discussion of their “methodology.”

GDI’s main partner appears to be advertising units, including Xander, acquired and used by Microsoft. After Kaminsky’s report, Microsoft announced that they would suspend the use of GDI’s services and conduct an internal review of how those blacklists got used. Score another one for Kaminsky:

The Microsoft-owned Xandr, an advertising company, has abided by a blacklist of conservative websites secretly compiled by the Global Disinformation Index, an organization that intends to “defund” and shut down disfavored speech. In the wake of the Washington Examiner‘s reporting, Microsoft has launched a review of its relationship with GDI and has suspended usage of the group’s services.

“We try to take a principled approach to accuracy and fighting foreign propaganda,” a spokesperson said on Saturday evening. “We’re working quickly to fix the issue and Xandr has stopped using GDI’s services while we are doing a larger review.”

Xandr subscribed prior to GDI’s exclusion list, which is said to include at least 2,000 websites, according to public documents. Microsoft’s backpedaling comes after the Washington Examiner revealed on Friday how Xandr has blocked conservative websites from receiving key ad dollars and labeled them as “false/misleading,” “hate speech,” or “reprehensible/offensive.”

The term “disinformation” relates specifically to the use of foreign propaganda. GDI’s blacklists essentially accused the sites targeted of cooperating with regimes hostile to the United States. This is not just wrong but is a terrible injustice to those of us who fall under GDI’s bogus and corrupt targeting. And it’s made worse by the revelation that some of GDI’s funding came from the State Department:

Watchdog groups have raised concerns over the State Department bankrolling a “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media outlets. …

GDI has received $330,000 combined from entities under the State Department , which led to First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress raising concerns over how this could be legal.

Several House Republicans demanded hearings on GDI in the immediate future. It will fit nicely into the GOP’s efforts to expose the political weaponization of government. It also comes at the same time that the Twitter Files and a lawsuit against Facebook have exposed government efforts to quash and silence dissent and debate on social media platforms. This takes that effort several steps further — attempting to strangle conservative voices even outside of the Big Tech platforms.

All of this smells like another Red Scare, Jonathan Turley warned on Saturday. Jazz wrote about Turley’s warning on Friday, but it’s worth another look here in a broader context than just on Twitter:

The Democratic Party was once the greatest defender of free speech, the greatest critic of corporate power, and the greatest skeptic of the FBI. It is now opposing the investigation into the FBI’s involvement in a massive corporate-run censorship system.

In the 1950s, it was easy for politicians to avoid discussing underlying views by just labeling their opponents as fellow travelers. We are watching the same use of personal attacks today as a way to evade the troubling disclosures in the Twitter Files.

While some like McCaskill yell “Russians!” others use more modern labels, such as “conspiracy theorists.” That notably includes the FBI itself.

When criticized for the role FBI agents played in secretly targeting citizens for censorship, the FBI called critics “conspiracy theorists . . . feeding the American public misinformation.” It is something that you might expect from a pundit or politician. It is far more menacing when this attack comes from the country’s largest law enforcement agency.

The Russia-collusion hoax has long since turned into a Red Scare-ish effort. Anyone who questioned the veracity of those claims got accused of being a dupe of the Russians, or actively working with them. When that fell apart, the same hysterics seized on the “disinformation” thread to whip up a social panic and justify Sedition Act-ish government intervention in public speech. That strategy is being used now to silence debate on a wide range of issues, not just for partisan advantage. As Turley notes, it has even been applied to anyone pointing to the Twitter Files and the clear government misconduct those reveal:

Alternatively, various Democrats portrayed anyone criticizing Twitter for censorship as supporting insurrections against the government. Member after member suggested that seeking to investigate the government’s role in censorship was to invite or even welcome another Jan. 6. …

It is all tragically familiar. The effort this week was to attack witnesses rather than address what appears to be the largest censorship system in the history of this country. It is, of course, ironic that those seeking to check such government-supported censorship are the ones being called Putin lovers. Putin loves censorship and likely stands in awe at the success of the left in using the FBI and corporations to regulate speech on social media.

Those corporations include GDI, and its funding by the State Department. Now that this corrupt circle has been exposed, we can expect it to go away — in this form. Don’t doubt for a moment that it won’t return in another form, unless we keep the heat on Congress to expose all of those who perpetrated it and all of those who continue to use McCarthyist tactics to smear and silence those who wish to dissent from their preferred narratives.

Once again, this is why we fight. We knew that we could not rely on Big Tech to provide us easy access to advertisers, but we didn’t know they’d adopt blacklists to cut us off entirely. Our members are what keep us going, and we appreciate them for standing up to the GDIs and the other McCarthyists.

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. 

Update: Kaminsky has some confirmation that the retreat at Microsoft is real, if not yet spectacular:

“I just checked in Xandr's platform again, and can confirm that all rejection flags have been removed from domains.  🇺🇸,” a senior ad industry exec tells @dcexaminer https://t.co/jPdYZGkxs4

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 13, 2023

Now the question will be whether platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have adopted GDI’s blacklists. Will they speak up to confirm or deny, and if so, will they also reject GDI’s smear-and-bury tactics?