Microsoft stonewalls on ‘review’ into State Department-backed ‘disinformation’ group

From Washington Examiner:

Microsoft is stonewalling on providing key details about its touted “review” into the State Department-funded Global Disinformation Index after suspending its relationship with the self-styled British “disinformation” tracker earlier this year. 

Following multiple Washington Examiner reports in February, Microsoft announced that it had “stopped using GDI’s services” as part of an investigation, while internal data showed that the corporation removed negative flags for conservative websites temporarily that likened them to peddling “disinformation.” However, Microsoft has yet to provide basic information about its purported inquiry into GDI and when it will make a final decision on whether it will resume the controversial partnership. 

“The more transparency the better,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner. “This is part of the Censorship Industrial Complex and it ought to be the subject of congressional inquiries. Whatever Microsoft said they’re doing is not nearly enough because of the government funding. Congress has an obligation to pursue it.” 

GDI received roughly $960,000 combined in grants from 2020 to 2022 from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and a government-backed nonprofit group called the National Endowment for Democracy, which is supported through congressional appropriations. The NED said in mid-February that it would no longer be providing money to GDI “to avoid the perception that NED is engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly.”

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