Government No Longer Funding Global Disinformation Index
The Government is no longer funding the Global Disinformation Index, Foreign Secretary David Cameron has said, following criticism of the organisation for censoring non-woke and Right of centre views. UnHerd, which says it has seen the ministerial letter, has the story.
[Cameron] was responding to a letter sent last month by Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who highlighted concerns about the GDI blurring the line between free speech and disinformation which were raised following an UnHerd investigation last month.
In the response, Cameron confirmed that “the FCDO has not funded GDI since 2023, and there are no current plans to do so”. He then underlined that section by hand, and added, hand-written, “thanks for pointing this out”.
He added that while countering disinformation from adversaries was important, “protecting free speech is a priority for the department”, going on to say that organisations supported by the Government should “uphold our values”.
The letter maintains that the Foreign Office is committed to opposing disinformation, specifically from Russia, and would continue working with technology and media organisations, but would not be providing funding to the GDI to do so.
In April, UnHerd published an investigation showing that the GDI published a “dynamic exclusion list” which associated holding gender-critical views with disinformation. UnHerd was placed on this list for publishing work from columnists Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel, who were both accused of articles which discriminated against transgender people.
While the Government has not provided funding to the GDI since 2023, it is understood that the company has held meetings with Foreign Office officials about resuming funding.
Worth reading in full.
The story has also been reported on Guido.
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Till the lunatic Starmer gets in….why were conservatives ever funding this bs.
Because they’re just politicians, like all the rest.
It was a very normie post, apologies.
“No current plans to do so”
I seem to remember:
”We have no plans to introduce a vaccine passport”
Is there a general election coming up?
No need to fund GDI any more – they did more than ‘uphold [the govt’s] values’, their control & censor ideology is now fully embedded.
They won’t notice. It’s already privately funded by busybody billionaires with highly questionable motives.
No government (ie our) money should be spent on this tripe.
What is disinformation? Who decides its definition? Why does the government think that countering ‘disinformation’ is its job? And more to the point, why is this unelected buttock faced multi-millionaire grifter in the cabinet?
They can counter “disinformation” if they like. They can do so by putting out what they think is the right information and then let each of us decide what we think about it all.
The best response to bad information is good information, not shutting people up.
But this assumes this is all actually in good faith and the government is actually worried about bad information. What they’re really worried about is perfectly good information that is a threat to established power. And of course, they can try to counter that with bad but more persuasive information, but that doesn’t really work. Censorship is the only real remedy to inconveniently true information.
Accusing others of lying to cover or promote their own lies is just yet another form of gaslighting of the population.
I do believe in the ‘Online Harms’ bill there is legislation that addresses censorship of true but problematic information.
“problematic” ——-Usually because it interferes with and has the potential to lower confidence in government policies on the 5 main agenda’s. —–Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate
why is this unelected buttock faced multi-millionaire grifter in the cabinet?
Nobody in the cabinet is elected, they’re all appointed by the monarch on advice of the prime minister (which is itself principally appointed by the monarch as he sees fit although the convention is that it should be the leader of a party which commands a majority in the house of commons).
Yes but ideally in order for our dropped and run over pizza of a democracy to be taken seriously they have to be an elected MP surely? And Cameron is not.
I don’t think so. At least, that’s not mentioned in here:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9877
On a not unrelated note, UK Column delved into C40 cities and the big players & Foundations behind it….It seems Sadiq Kahn is just a small fish in this Globalist agenda.
“….It seems Sadiq Kahn is just a small fish in this Globalist agenda.”
Yes, but he’s ambitious Ron.
😀 😀 😀
But why (if it still is) is the Conservative party funding Hope Not Hate HNH the far left pressure group that Reform didn’t have to spine to tell, go do one!
Correction: The taxpayers will no longer be funding the global disinformation index. Fear not, the government will have something else planned to fritter our taxes away.
That’s for sure. And they almost certainly have some other way of censoring and don’t need the GDI any more.
Penny Mordaunt has simply re-directed the funds as the article I have posted from Off-Guardian makes clear.
Oliver Cromwell’s speech shows politicians haven’t changed much … “It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not process? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lords temple into a den of thieves, by you’re immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock… Read more »
A very nice Philippic.
A key requirement for countering disinformation is the ability to recognise it. I don’t think anyone in government or opposition has that skill. The skill they are required to have is the ability to present whatever the government line currently is in a convincing manner, or to put it another way, lying with a straight face.
Thus we have Zelensky a paragon of virtue, whose every word is the shining truth and Putin who is a slippery-tongued dissembler. There is Biden, the virtuous leader of the free world and Xi, a ruthless dictator.
Then back home we have Sunak and Starmer, but no-one can really tell the difference, they just have different flavours of the same “truth”.
As this article makes clear the UK government is still fighting the good fight on the “misinformation” garbage and so ‘Just Call me Dave’ is, no surprise, telling porkies. And look at who funded the guide: https://off-guardian.org/2024/05/08/new-guide-teaches-uk-mps-to-spot-conspiracy-theories/ “The report was co-written by “experts” representing several non-governmental organisations, and fact-checkers including: FullFact – funded by (among others) Google, Facebook and the Open Society Foundation. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue – funded by (among others) the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, over a dozen national governments and the UN. Global Network on Extremism and Technology – The academic research arm of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a thinktank “designed to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms”…and which is funded by (among others) Facebook, Amazon, Youtube and Microsoft. In short, it’s all a rather incestuous funding pool of the same handful of tech giants and billionaires paying “experts” to tell them what they want to hear. But we probably shouldn’t judge until we’ve read the “guide” itself, which is tricky because it doesn’t seem to be publicly available (seriously I looked everywhere, if you’re aware of a copy online post it in the comments and we’ll add it the link… Read more »
The report is on the ISD Global website:
https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conspiracy-Theories-Guide.pdf
I’ve had a quick scan through. It appears to be the usual double-down, deny-everything propagandist guff, complete with picture of Trump under the QAnon heading (as if that applies to the UK). It also seems to claim that everything should be treated as potentially anti-semitic (‘Numerous conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Jewish racism.‘) – the list of conspiracy theories on page 11 has anti-semitism linked to every single one. WTAF?
There is of course absolutely no mention of all the ‘conspiracy theories’ which have been proven to be factually correct.
They might take a leaf out of their own recommendations:
1. Check before sharing. It is vital to check that information has a solid factual basis.
👍 👍 👍