Government-sponsored agency the Global Disinformation Index is censoring journalism by causing publications to be starved of advertising if they publish anything deemed “harmful”, such as gender critical content. UnHerd‘s Freddie Sayers has written about the problem and his own experience of it. Here’s an excerpt.
“Our team re-reviewed the domain, the rating will not change as it continues to have anti-LGBTQI+ narratives… The site authors have been called out for being anti-trans. Kathleen Stock is acknowledged as a ‘prominent gender-critical’ feminist.”
This was part of an email sent to UnHerd at the start of January from an organisation called the Global Disinformation Index. It was its justification, handed down after a series of requests, for placing UnHerd on a so-called “dynamic exclusion list” of publications that supposedly promote “disinformation” and should therefore be boycotted by all advertisers.
It provided examples of the offending content: Kathleen Stock, whose columns are up for a National Press Award this week, Julie Bindel, a lifelong campaigner against violence against women, and Debbie Hayton, who is transgender. Apparently the GDI equates “gender-critical” beliefs, or maintaining that biological sex differences exist, with “disinformation” — despite the fact that those beliefs are specifically protected in British law and held by the majority of the population.
The verdicts of “ratings agencies” such as the GDI, within the complex machinery that serves online ads, are a little-understood mechanism for controlling the media conversation. In UnHerd’s case, the GDI verdict means that we only received between 2% and 6% of the ad revenue normally expected for an audience of our size. Meanwhile, neatly demonstrating the arbitrariness and subjectivity of these judgements, NewsGuard, a rival ratings agency, gives UnHerd a 92.5% trust rating, just ahead of the New York Times at 87.5%.
So, what are these ‘ratings agencies’ that could be the difference between life and death for a media company? How does their influence work? And who funds them? The answers are concerning and raise serious questions about the freedom of the press and the viability of a functioning democracy in the internet age. …
These companies act as invisible gatekeepers within the vast machinery of online advertising.
How this works is relatively straightforward: in UnHerd’s case, we contract with an advertising agency, which relies on a popular tech platform called Grapeshot, founded in the U.K. and since acquired by Larry Ellison’s Oracle, to automatically select appropriate websites for particular campaigns. Grapeshot in turn automatically uses the Global Disinformation Index to provide a feed of data about “brand safety” — and if GDI gives a website a poor score, very few ads will be served. …
The Global Disinformation Index was founded in the U.K. in 2018, with the stated objective of disrupting the business model of online disinformation by starving offending publications of funding. The GDI receives money from the U.K. Government (via the FCDO), the European Union, the German Foreign Office, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and a body called Disinfo Cloud, which was created and funded by the U.S. State Department.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, its two founders emerged from the upper echelons of ‘respectable’ society. First, there is Clare Melford, whose biography published by the World Economic Forum states that she had previously “led the transition of the European Council on Foreign Relations from being part of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation to independent status”. She set up the GDI with Daniel Rogers, who worked “in the U.S. intelligence community”, before founding a company called “Terbium Labs” that used AI and machine learning to scour the internet for illicit use of sensitive data and then sold it handsomely to Deloitte. Together, they have spearheaded a carefully intellectualised definitional creep as to what counts as “disinformation”. Back when it was first set up in 2018, they defined the term on their website as “deliberately false content, designed to deceive”. Within these strict parameters, you can see how it might have appeared useful to have dedicated fact-checkers identifying the most egregious offenders and calling them out. But they have since broadened the definition to encompass anything that deploys an “adversarial narrative” — stories that may be factually true, but pit people against each other by attacking an individual, an institution or ‘the science’.
GDI founder Clare Melford explained in an interview at the LSE in 2021 how this expanded definition was more “useful”, as it allowed them to go beyond fact-checking to targeting anything on the internet that they deem “harmful” or “divisive”.
Worth reading in full.
Watch Freddie talking about his experience with the GDI here.
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Slightly off topic, but related to online funding; I wonder if the Brave browser can be a source of income for Daily Sceptic. I’m not entirely sure of the full details but if any of the mods or editors go to https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ it may be useful. It basically allows users of brave to contribute a crypto currency to the site.
Brave browser also passively blocks things like YouTube adverts and has VPN and Tor built in, so I can’t imagine that they would be on the same side of these online tyrants.
It is the final corporate pisstake before collapse. It is only tangentially linked to movements in late twentieth century philosophy. They rob you blind and turn you into a rent serf and then just to rub it in they develop a system of perverted virtue as if to say not only do we own you but we own everything about you including your speech and thoughts.
The curious thing is that GDI receives government money to sustain the attack on free speech. It would seem that the Tory government is sponsoring woke censorship.
Please stop using the nonsense term “gender critical”. Gender has no meaning outside of grammar. The word is SEX. And I don’t think “critical” is the right word.
I’m a SEX REALIST.
Yes I agree. It does my head in. ”Sex realist” sounds way more logical and factually correct. On this I shall defer to J.K;
”Some people feel strongly that they should have been, or wish to be seen as, the sex class into which they weren’t born. Gender dysphoria is a real and very painful condition and I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it. I want them to be free to dress and present themselves however they like and I want them to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen regarding housing, employment and personal safety. I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. I believe the ideology that preaches those tenets has caused, and continues to cause, very real harm to vulnerable people.
I am strongly against women’s and girls’ rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate trans-identified men, for the very simple reason that no study has ever demonstrated that trans-identified men don’t have exactly the same pattern of criminality as other men, and because, however they identify, men retain their advantages of speed and strength. In other words, I think the safety and rights of girls and women are more important than those men’s desire for validation.”
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1776616861888655835
I tend to think that many of us have some feelings about wanting to be different people than we are, often in ways that are unrealistic or impossible. I do wonder if indulging or medicalising those feelings is that helpful.
The Freddie Sayers monologue about the massive monolithic danger of the censorship industrial complex is very good. However he is “establishment adjacent” and I did find it hysterical when he’s says,
“so what is happening here is a lot more dangerous, and a lot more widespread, than ANYONE realises.”
At this point I was thinking to myself,
“Freddie, Freddie, Freddie, you poor slow creature. You don’t yet know a tenth of it and you clearly haven’t availed yourself of the Daily Sceptic comments section. But you are waking up it seems (which I have to say, I have been expecting of him, he’s been teetering on the brink for ages without even realising it himself and I do believe his sincerity
).
Also I note his form of words indicates, rather than reading what he would probably consider “conspiracy theory” sources, he seems to think he has worked this out for himself. I suspect again he is being sincere. So genuinely well done Freddie. You have got there under your own steam and by applying logic and intelligence.
So, welcome to the club. Indeed you are VERY welcome.
But a word of warning. You are now on a slippery slope and I’m not sure myself where the end is.
You have to look on the bright side. The jaded British world view is a good antidote to all of this. The fine old English art of taking the piss. It is a very anti-intellectual culture but that has its good side in terms of the lack of tolerance for nonsense. Orwell said in the 1940s that German style fascism would never take hold in England because most people would just laugh at it. I thin that still holds true today.
“German style fascism would never take hold in England because most people would just laugh at it”
England but not Scotland.
Who would have ever thought that free speech chilling supposed fake “anti-hate speech” laws would have poisoned the unmulticultural multicultural ununited United Kingdom?
I’m sure most of us are already aware of this, but with regards to the origins of the nonsensical term ”gender identity”, it’s worth a reminder that it was actually professional pervert, John Money who invented it, and he definitely didn’t identify as a feminist. You may recall the tragic story of the twin boy ( see hyperlink below ) that ended up with complications from a botched circumcision but when Money got his sadistic hands on him things got a whole lot worse;
”Modern discussions of gender often include statements like, “Sex and gender are different.” or “Gender is something you identify as.” But where did these ideas originate? While many attribute it to feminists, the first person to use “gender” in such a way was John Money in 1955. He is often referred to as “the father of gender identity,” since he is the one who invented the term. While John Money is mostly famous for his work on transgenderism and the infamous David Reimer case, he actually has an extensive history of sexological research that is controversial, to say the least. Scarily enough, his ideas are currently being replicated in the current conversation about sex and gender.
John Money’s work on the sexual citizenship of children has earned him the title of “Pedophile Advocate” – rightfully so. His work on “chronophilia” described an erotic attraction to people of different age groups. These age groups included minors, not surprisingly. And he tried to normalize this for years, despite there not being scientific evidence that this exists whatsoever. In 1994, he opposed the classification of pedophilia as an abnormal fetish, even though that is what the overwhelming amount of research has proven (1994, p. 41). Clearly he had an ulterior motive and thought that it was appropriate to include his personal goals of “sexual liberation for children” in his work and label it as science. The same year, he said that he wanted to look at pedophilia “in the broader, cultural purview of sexuality’s timetables” and his reasoning was that pedophilia was historically legal and that society is stigmatizing “attraction to juveniles” in order to fulfill an anti-liberation agenda. His work includes advocating for a reconsideration of sex offender laws (1992) to further normalize child abuse in the law.”
https://www.radar.gaysagainstgroomers.com/post/john-money-the-godfather-of-gender-identity-and-pedophile-apologist
We are bombarded with new words to describe different genders, like those recently at Stoke Hospital but what we never see is a flag for the gender grouping attracted to sex with minors or the other gender grouping attracted to sex with their own family.
I am concerned that U.K. private clinics will still be allowed to see minors over their ‘gender confusion’ and what laws, if any, will be in place to protect them.
All of this crap is going to disappear very soon when we are faced with more pressing realities. We could be looking at a major disruption involving 40 percent of global oil supply disappearing. Doesn’t sound like much but given the margins of this market it would completely collapse European economies overnight. I thhnk people need to take things more seriously. In our country everything has come to us an an ever-growing platter for the last few decades. It shouldb’t be assumed that this situation is there forever. The closure of the Persian Gulf and oil routes is imminent and the effect will make trangenderism seem like an insane and frivolous nightmare from a distant past.
What info do you have on possible oil route disruption
Not “route” – its the “supply” threatened as tensions in the region grow.
If you can’t see a real danger in front of your face then ask yourself if you really should have an opinion about anything. The aim of society can be seen as its sustenance and its betterment. If you lack even the most basic tentacles of discerning real threats then you need to either get out more or undertake the journey inwards. We are in a real situation we don’t have to pretend. And there isn’t some luxury of indefinite time.
The main thing is how you get on with people and you have to love them all incliding the chavs because it is a matter of national survival. And I learned very early on that the average British chav would be a billionaire in any other country given their guile. Give me a squadron of chavs and we would conquer the bloody world. There is not a pathway off the escalation ladder and so given that then you have to imporovise accordingly. We have passed the point where the current conflict can be restrained or predicted.
The final days of nonsense where we are instructed to think about seemingly imnportant events. You will see what I mean in a few weeks time. Will you have anything to go back to or even to refer to? I don’t think so because the wrecking crew did a very good job over a long period of time. Maybe a few people will be able to find each other, those who acknowldedge the cataclysm. Don’t go crying to your neighbour because he was better prepared than you were. Because your lack or preparedness sets off a red light in terms of your uselessness in a survival situation and it is picked straight up.
Surely this breaches the Equality Act and Human Rights Act?
“, Julie Bindel, a lifelong campaigner against violence against women”
Yeah that and wanting men in concentration camps, with 4x4s to ride round on to keep us occupied. She has a heart after all!
When I think GDI the Mitsubishi Carisma (direct injection) comes to mind. A bullet proof car from the late nineties and early 2000s.