By GABE KAMINSKY | WASHINGTON EXAMINER
An advertising company owned by Microsoft that subscribes to a left-leaning group’s secret blacklist for conservative media outlets has been internally flagging right-leaning websites and has taken steps to defund and deplatform them, according to records obtained by the Washington Examiner and whistleblowers in the advertising industry.
The blacklisted sites include The Daily Signal, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Mike Huckabee, Judicial Watch.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British organization with at least two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding secret blacklists to ad companies, such as Xandr, owned by Microsoft, with the intent of shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation.”
Editor’s note: Global Disinformation Index is also funded by major liberal groups, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and the Argosy Foundation, a pro-abortion foundation founded by the founder of Boston Scientific. The Catena Foundation is an environmentalist group, and the Knight Foundation is associated with mainstream media. Others include:
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.
“Xandr’s use of politically motivated flags on this blacklist stands outside of the norm in advertising,” said a senior executive at an ad company, noting that the real purpose of blacklisting should be to protect brands from advertising “on content that is illegal, fraudulent, [or] low-quality.”
“In this case, Xandr prevented us from talking to our voters in the critical days leading up to Election Day,” the executive, who was granted anonymity to discuss confidential company matters, told the Washington Examiner. “Our audience reads the Examiner, Daily Wire, Townhall, etc. Voters go to these news & opinion sites [to] inform their decisions. And if Microsoft is using their technology to block us from showing ads on these websites, they’re actively preventing us from talking to voters on the public squares where their decisions are being informed.”
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.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on GDI’s list and spoke to an ad-buying source who said Breitbart News is also. Separately, GDI has said that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for purported disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News Network, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
An executive in the ad industry who contracts with conservative media outlets provided the Washington Examiner with internal Xandr data showing which websites the group has financially punished. That data were uploaded by the Washington Examiner to a spreadsheet and can be viewed below.
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.
State Department-backed groups that underwrite DGI include National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group that receives nearly all of its funding from annual congressional appropriations, and Disinfo Cloud, a now defunct platform through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Disinfo Cloud was used between 2018 and 2021 by Congress and over a dozen federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Energy, Treasury, and the FBI , according to the State Department.
Read about how the State Department has collaborated to defund conservative news.
And in Anchorage we have the Anchorage Daily News….to the left of the left
ADN intentionally drafts inflammatory nonsense.. The same owner publishes the Alaska Journal of Commerce which is the polar opposite of ADN and were you at the helm of both you wouldn’t be able to help laughing at the horseshit you drafted under the ADN banner that somebody swallowed completely.
ADN exists to harvest money from idiots, particularly those that need to be told what to think.
First Amendment Freedom of Speech only applies to government, not private companies. If trying to blacklist private corporations, or private individuals was illegal Donald Trump Jr. would be the first person to indict.
Your leftist talking point fails when the private companies work in concert with or as agents of government.
Need to provide some references other than Deep State suppression of investigations, or indictments. Maybe the current House Oversight Committee investigating the investigators will turn something up for Art
Incorrect.
Private companies acting as government agents are liable for actions they take which violate the first amendment. When twitter, google, etc began censoring members at the behest of the government they lost any and all “private company” protections.
You can’t work for the government, take money from them, and follow their orders then turn around and claim “private”. Like virginity, it’s lost as a result of the act.
Ordinarily at this point I’d comment on the gross lack of basic civics knowledge. But this understanding has evolved over time. I had to do some research to confirm this. If we ever bother to teach civics again, this needs to be part of the curriculum.
You must include Michael Flynn, or Paul Manafort when talking about unregistered agents. Of course they received pardons from Donald Trump. The House already has testimony documenting Trump’s attempts at speech suppression with Twitter.
Frank, it is very clear that you have no real argument, when you trot out all those individuals. The point here is that government agencies through their proxy surrogates (whom they support with our tax dollars) suppressed first amendment guaranteed political speech. It really doesn’t matter who and your lame…..”he did it too” never makes it lawful or right.
Sounds like you’re defending blacklisting and lack of free speech. Should we start setting up re-education camps as well? /end sarcasm
When government colludes with private entities to silence speech it is a Constitutional violation.
And here I thought I might be the first to comment on this article, and was going to say “OK, radical leftist troll contingent on MRAK, I challenge you to TRY to defend the gross violations of the First Amendment on THIS matter!” But lo and behold, the insidiously disingenuous ‘Frank Rast’ steps into the breach on behalf of the morally and intellectually bankrupt deep state and ruling class establishment.
When they try to silence we Conservatives…JUST SHOUT LOUDER AND DO NOT STOP SHOUTING!!!
This isn’t news any more than saying it gets cold in Alaska
And nothing will happen. The courts lean left and the government is not going to take themselves to jail. I would hope some day the left and their lies will be answered for by some higher power that knows right from wrong. If the government doesn’t follow the constitution and bill of rights then its citizens don’t have to abide by them rather that is total breakdown of America and what make her such a great country. Welcome to the third world lifestyle.
I have no idea how much of this is true, maybe all of it, but the Washington Examiner is not known for accuracy in reporting.
The FBI needs to designate George Soros as a domestic terrorist!
AP – Neither is most of the mainstream legacy media!
Town Hall is flagged for being Reprehensible? I didn’t know that, because I’ve been going there for years to read Derek Hunter and my wife often forwards me Kurt Schlichter pieces which are carried on TH, ( Kurt is very funny).
I find it amazing, that having lived in 8 different decades upon this planet, staying curious and studious and attempting to stay abreast of subjects like Politics, History and Science, I wake up one morning to learn that it has all been for naught. Apparently, according to Suzanne’s story my sources of news and current opinion and thought are deemed to be Reprehensible and offensive. I am crestfallen!
In my misspent youth, my reading all 11 volumes of Will and Ariel Durant’s “Story of Civilization”, along with Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”, Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, Catherine Drinker Bowens, “Miracle at Philadelphia” , some of of the Federalist Papers, and my favorite ,” A Revolutionary Dialogue ” , by Merrill D. Peterson (an absolute must read), have either misinformed me, or I am incapable of understanding logic or reason.
Label me Reprehensible and Offensive, but only if that’s the description for truth in this age of lies and malicious propaganda.
Well, my close to seven decades couldn’t agree more with you Oosik. I have always believed that the truth would always shine brighter than than the evil peddled by the Leftists, but perhaps I’m now being informed my thought processes are flawed? Hmmm, I have a nagging disposition to not cave to such malarkey, as my heart of hearts has been my guiding compass for all these years, and though others have tried to tell me I’ve been misinformed, the shinning light of the Truth has always proven to be the guiding luminescence on the righteous path forward.
Yor tax dollars in the mushroom business,
The FBI needs to designate George Soros as a domestic terrorist!
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