As Microsoft courts major victories in Washington including OpenAI’s Project Stargate support and a potential TikTok acquisition, a new report from the Foundation for Freedom Online reveals the tech giant has maintained controversial censorship partnerships and initiatives from the Biden era, including ties to NewsGuard, the establishment pro-censorship group operating a news blacklist against conservative media.
Microsoft has had a good two weeks in Washington DC. Microsft-funded OpenAI received the President’s personal support for Project Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture led by OpenAI to invest in AI infrastructure. And now the software giant founded by creepy Bill Gates is in the running to acquire TikTok, which must be under majority U.S. ownership by April to avert a nationwide ban.
Microsoft has remarkably managed to achieve these early wins in Washington despite the fact that it currently retains virtually all of its Biden-era initiatives that contributed to the online censorship of Americans — particularly Trump supporters and conservative media.
A new report from the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) provides a comprehensive overview of Microsoft’s involvement in the censorship-industrial complex.
Chief among them is the company’s partnership with NewsGuard via its “Defending Democracy” initiative. Microsoft has long been NewsGuard’s closest ally in the tech industry, installing the blacklist of disfavored news websites on its Edge browser by default within a year of the censorship-as-a-service company’s founding. The partnership remains in place despite Trump’s FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, describing NewsGuard as both “orwellian” and a primary component in what he has labeled the “Censorship Cartel.” […]
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