Disinformation Inc: Massive corporation Oracle severs ties with conservative blacklist group
Gabe Kaminsky
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EXCLUSIVE — The multinational software company Oracle is cutting ties with the Global Disinformation Index, a State Department-funded group that the Washington Examiner revealed has been secretly blacklisting conservative media outlets.
“After conducting a review, we agree with others in the advertising industry that the services we provide marketers must be in full support of free speech, which is why we are ending our relationship with GDI,” Michael Egbert, vice president for corporate communications at Oracle, said in a statement on Wednesday to the Washington Examiner.
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Oracle announced a “collaboration” in 2021 with GDI, which has continued to come under fire from Republican lawmakers in connection to its covert operation of feeding blacklists of conservative websites to advertisers with the intent of shutting down disfavored speech. Egbert declined to comment on whether it has yet notified the British organization, which has two affiliated American nonprofit groups, and whether the action is effective immediately.
“To prevent placements on disinformation sites, brands require a proactive, always-on brand safety approach that helps marketers identify suitable environments while avoiding brand-damaging ones,” Oracle said in August 2021 as part of its prior GDI-related announcement. “Today, we’re proud to announce a collaboration with The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), an independent non-profit that provides trusted, non-partisan ratings to assess a site’s disinformation risk, to help marketers safeguard ad spend and protect brands from inadvertently supporting disinformation sites.”
“Offering an additional layer of brand protection to marketers, GDI’s risk rating analysis powers a new Oracle Contextual Intelligence safety segment for potentially false information,” the statement continued. “Marketers can opt in to use the segment to block the domains categorized as high-risk for disinformation and avoid targeting these sites for ads moving forward.”
The major move comes over two months after Microsoft, whose advertising company Xandr once subscribed to GDI’s “dynamic exclusion list” of conservative websites, temporarily severed ties with the blacklist group, the Washington Examiner reported. Microsoft launched an investigation, and internal data provided by ad industry whistleblowers showed that conservative websites no longer are labeled by Xandr as “false/misleading,” “hate speech,” or “reprehensible/offensive.”
A spokesperson for Microsoft said the investigation is ongoing and that they aim to provide information about it soon. It’s unclear whether or not the review will result in the relationship between the two entities being severed for good.
The Washington Examiner previously sought and failed to get in touch with spokespeople for Oracle between Feb. 16 and Friday. Oracle’s decision comes days after an investigation revealed that GDI’s two linked U.S. groups, the private AN Foundation, also known as the Disinformation Index Foundation, and its affiliated public charity, Disinformation Index Inc., are hiding critical information on their tax forms about board members, officers, and the source of a $115,000 donation.
A lawyer for GDI claimed in an April 6 letter to the Washington Examiner that it was redacting its tax forms due to federal regulations on “harassment” campaigns against tax-exempt entities. Several attorneys specializing in tax-exempt law, including the National Legal and Policy Center’s Paul Kamenar, said federal law does not allow organizations to redact tax forms provided to the public.
On Tuesday, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) demanded GDI CEO Clare Melford, who is listed in Delaware corporate records interchangeably as a board member and officer for the two U.S. groups, release a “complete and unredacted list of donors.” Buck previously wrote a letter on March 8 to the State Department and raised concerns over its grants to GDI.
Between 2020 and 2021, GDI received roughly $665,000 from the State Department and a nonprofit group funded by the government called the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED said in mid-February that it was cutting ties with GDI and would no longer fund it.
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“As I wrote to Secretary Blinken in March, U.S. taxpayers should not provide funding for international organizations focused on blacklisting and targeting right-leaning American news organizations. However, the Global Disinformation Index has in the past chosen to accept and request U.S. funding from the State Department, therefore I believe that U.S. taxpayers deserve full transparency from GDI regarding information about who else has funded their efforts to silence conservative speech,” Buck had told the Washington Examiner.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the GDI for comment.