We’ve written previously about the “Global Disinformation Index,” a British organization with two American affiliates. This company was responsible for giving blacklists to ad companies like Xandr to restrict ad dollars and break conservative websites financially, effectively silencing them. RedState was among the conservative sites that were blacklisted, thereby hurting our reach and ad revenue.

But it wasn’t just any random group doing this. The GDI was indirectly funded, in part, by the Global Engagement Center, which is listed as a State Department entity.

“GDI has also disclosed taking money from Disinfo Cloud, an unclassified and defunct platform through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Disinfo Cloud was used between 2018 and 2021 by Congress and over a dozen federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Energy, Treasury, and the FBI, according to the State Department.”

That means an arm of the government was indirectly funding the folks blacklisting us and other conservative sites.

On Thursday, the Twitter Files dropped more information from Matt Taibbi about the Global Engagement Center. The Global Engagement Center was formed to counter “foreign disinformation.”

9. The Global Engagement Center is usually listed as a State Department entity.
It’s not.
Created in Obama’s last year, GEC is an interagency group “within” State, whose initial partners included FBI, DHS, NSA, CIA, DARPA, Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and others. pic.twitter.com/rdezEFYRwI

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

Here Taibbi talks about the GDI.

43.The Washington Examiner and @gekaminsky just profiled a GEC-funded NGO in the UK that algorithmically scores media outlets by “risk.”

How does downranking the Daily Wire to help the New York Times get more ad revenue counter “foreign” disinformation? pic.twitter.com/KvCL5sM2HJ

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

The GEC is getting millions, which they then give out to “sub-contractors.” But they don’t think we have a right to know who those people getting our money are.

https://t.co/nHnOyqlWrV IG report shows GEC was initially obligated $98.7 million, of which roughly $80 million came from the Pentagon. It reportedly gave to at least 39 different organizations, whose names were redacted.

Why is this list secret? pic.twitter.com/W8yUes75Ly

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

According to the Twitter Files, one group that got money from GEC — the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab — wrote to Twitter about 40,000 accounts, which they believed were suspected of engaging in “inauthentic behavior” related to “Hindu nationalism,” and suspected some of them were in the pay of or volunteers for India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But Taibbi said the list appeared to be full of ordinary Americans who had no relation to India.

4. “I have no connection to any Hindu folks… Just a Reagan Republican here in CT” replied “Bobby Hailstone.”

“A Hindu nationalist? I’ve never even been out of this country. Let alone the state of NJ,” said “Lady_DI816.”

“These people are insane!” said “Krista Woods.”

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

DFR claimed that they had an “exclusively international focus,” and denied using tax money to track Americans.

8. But Americans on DFR’s list, like Marysel Urbanik, are unconvinced its focus is “exclusively international.”

“This is un-American,” says Urbanik, who immigrated from Castro’s Cuba. “They do this in places that don’t believe in free speech.” pic.twitter.com/7MKySCe3XN

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

Here were a couple of other examples:

14. Here are 5500 names GEC told Twitter it believed were “Chinese… accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation.” It takes about negative ten seconds to find non-Chinese figures: https://t.co/pkttqOL34S pic.twitter.com/wjyuJrUFpN

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

The Chinese “list” included CNN employees, which is kind of funny.

15. GEC’s “Chinese” list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees based abroad. “Not exactly Anderson’s besties, but CNN assets if you will,” quipped Twitter’s Patrick Conlon.

“A total crock,” added Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. pic.twitter.com/vvvrjOxBfO

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 2, 2023

When someone wasn’t connected to a foreign entity, they would sometimes be thrown in with the claim that they were saying things that put them in the same “ecosystem.”

As Taibbi explained, GEC’s funding is up for a vote this year. “Can we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?” he asked. And how about an explanation, as well as who else has been funded through this endeavor?