“Disinformation-tracking groups ‘are part of a stealth operation blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media,’ writes investigative journalist Gabe Kaminsky for the Washington Examiner. According to his report published on Thursday, February 9th, these supposedly non-partisan organizations are feeding blacklists of right-wing websites–and other news media–to major ad companies with the aim of ‘defunding disfavored speech,’ as leaked documentation shows. The story is simple: brands that want to advertise their products online turn to giant ad companies. These ad companies want to avoid advertising on sites with questionable reputations for fear of their clients being canceled, so in turn, they contract ‘disinformation trackers’ to obtain private information about potentially dangerous websites ‘they should purportedly defund.’ One of the groups behind this is the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), whose mission is to ‘remove the financial incentive’ to create ‘disinformation.’ The organization compiles a secretive ‘dynamic exclusion list’ of news outlets it deems to have a high risk of spreading disinformation, a list intended to severely impact the outlets’ advertising revenue. Just as a side note, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the U.S. State Department-backed National Endowment for Democracy are both listed among the founders of GDI. Among the ten outlets on GDI’s ‘riskiest’ list are The American Conservative, The Spectator, Real Clear Politics, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and The New York Post–all of which skew to the Right. Some ad companies, such as Xandr, have adopted GDI’s exclusion list to punish content they deem ‘morally reprehensible or patently offensive’ or that ‘could include false or misleading information.’”
“Investigative Journalist,” The European Conservative, Feb. 15, 2023
