An investigative journalist has revealed that the censorship regime at Microsoft remains intact and unrepentant, despite the pro-free speech ultimatum that accompanied the 2024 presidential election.
Allum Bokhari, an author and current managing director at the Foundation for Freedom Online, sounded the alarm about Microsoft not joining other Big Tech companies in reversing course on censorship, according to his Monday remarks in an interview on Newsmax host Rob Schmitt’s eponymous show.
“I think there's a recognition among some of the biggest tech companies that online censorship was rejected at the ballot box decisively,” Bokhari correctly noted. “The whole previous regime that worked so hard to censor American citizens using the pretext of combating disinformation has really been very, very unpopular.”
Bokhari warned that Microsoft was a significant outlier and called out its collusion with NewsGuard: “Microsoft has scaled back none of its programs. It remains partnered with NewsGuard, for example, which is an organization that blacklists disfavored media companies and then goes to advertising companies using those blacklists to financially throttle news websites they don't like. I believe they've even targeted Newsmax as well as many other conservative media outlets. And that partnership continues with Microsoft.”
NewsGuard is an anti-free speech ratings firm that the Media Research Center has repeatedly busted for pushing censorship and flagrant bias. Three MRC studies have demonstrated that NewsGuard is extremely biased in favor of the left. The most recent study showed that NewsGuard gave an average rating of 91 percent to publications on the left while giving an average rating of 65 percent to publications on the right.
ICYMI: Read MRC’s Latest Study on NewsGuard’s Biased Ratings
NewsGuard has even been used by the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to shut down conservative viewpoints. Additionally, NewsGuard has received more than $749,000 in taxpayer funding from the Department of Defense.
But Bokhari has made clear that Microsoft’s support for censorship goes far beyond just partnering with NewsGuard. In a Jan. 27 report, Bokhari covered Microsoft’s connections to groups that fight so-called disinformation, including within the federal government. Not only has Microsoft collaborated with the government on these efforts, but it has also hired a former member of the infamous pro-censorship Stanford Internet Observatory.
Flashback: Emails Expose Media Cozying Up to Pro-Censorship Standford Internet Observatory-tied Group
Additionally, according to MRC Free Speech America's exclusive CensorTrack database, Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, even censored search and image results for the famous “Tank Man” image, which shows a Chinese man standing in front of a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
