(Feb. 9) As an avid foe of subversive disinformation , I guess now I should be bashing myself. An economically powerful media-filtering group has flagged one of my columns as disinformation.
This puts me somewhat in the position of the right-wing protester (although I’m far from “right-wing”) in the Oct. 15, 1984 , entry of the comic strip “Bloom County” who informed a police officer that, because protests show a disrespect for authority that right-wingers usually deplore, it was the officer’s duty to “bash our heads.”
Actually, I shouldn’t make light of it because the flagging of my column is part of a nasty effort that, apparently, is costing my publication a great deal of money and depriving easy access to the Washington Examiner’s work for huge numbers of readers.
The Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky has the report Thursday:
“Well-funded ‘disinformation’ tracking groups are part of a stealth operation blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media. … Major ad companies are increasingly seeking guidance from purportedly ‘nonpartisan’ groups claiming to be detecting and fighting online disinformation.’ These same ‘disinformation’ monitors are compiling secret website blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech.”
But the material these groups label as “disinformation” often is opinion well within the mainstream of American political thought — and, in my case, some anodyne facts used to support the opinion. In short, what amounts to a secret Big Tech effort at censorship is using economic blackmail to keep readers from even seeing opinions of which the Left disapproves.
This is nefarious. It may even be illegally collusive. Either way, please allow me to defend myself while providing an example of the degree of rank dishonesty in this big money, Big Tech censorship effort.
The column of mine specifically targeted for “deplatforming” by the British company called Global Disinformation Index was headlined “ The Left’s gender-bending obsession is tiresome and absurd.”…. [The full column is here.]