The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a “disinformation tracking” organization backed by the U.S. state department, pushed major advertisers to boycott websites that promoted the theory that the coronavirus outbreak was caused by a leak from a laboratory — a theory that is now endorsed by the U.S. government.
The GDI has been in the news recently for its blacklist of conservative websites, which it provided to advertisers in an effort to financially throttle conservative media.
A man uses his mobile phone as he walks in front of Microsoft’s local headquarters in Beijing on July 20, 2021. (Photo by Noel Celis / AFP) (Photo by NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images)
The leak of GDI’s blacklist led Microsoft to suspend its partnership with the organization, which had been used to blacklist conservative media on Xandr, the advertising platform owned by the tech giant.
Via the Washington Examiner:
The Global Disinformation Index, a British group with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit organizations, has continued to come under fire for feeding conservative news blacklists to advertising companies. This same government-funded entity repeatedly applied pressure on companies to cut ties with websites promoting the once alleged right-wing “conspiracy” that COVID-19 emerged from a lab — which the Energy Department recently concluded is probable based on intelligence.
“GDI is part of [a] disturbing constellation of pop-up censorship organizations that all descended on stifling COVID origins discourse online simultaneously,” Mike Benz, a former State Department official and director of Foundation For Freedom Online, a censorship watchdog, told the Washington Examiner.
Despite mounting evidence and belated admissions from the government and media of the lab leak theory’s veracity, there has been little public acknowledgment from official institutions, advertisers, or social media companies that censorship and financial blacklisting of proponents of the theory was wrong. Facebook, which banned numerous users for promoting the theory, has yet to announce it will restore their accounts.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.