Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro exposed the powerful entities trying to censor so-called “misinformation” and dictate what media is “safe” for advertising in the first episode of his new YouTube series, “Facts.”
In the episode, released Saturday on YouTube, Shapiro explains how the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which represents 90% of “global marketing communications,” and the World Economic Forum are behind a large-scale effort to influence how advertisers spend their money.
“There’s a group of people who control what you are allowed to see, the news you read, the videos you watch, the posts you engage with. You haven’t heard of them. You don’t know their names, but they determine through methods, both direct and indirect, whether you are allowed to be exposed to particular messages. Their decisions can bankrupt companies, silence voices, and fundamentally shift cultural norms,” Shapiro explains.
In the video, Shapiro details how the WFA formed the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) in 2019. Soon after, GARM became a “flagship project” of the World Economic Forum. GARM brought together multiple industries for the purpose of addressing “the challenge of harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising.”
Members of GARM include massive corporations like Meta, ABInBev, American Express, Kellog’s, Microsoft, Merck, Snapchat, The Walt Disney Company, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube.
GARM also created the Brand Safety Floor and Suitability Framework in which it defines the brand safety floor as “content not appropriate for any advertising support.”
“Think of brand safety as a dog whistle for censorship,” Shapiro says. “In other words, if you publish content that violates these guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.”
One of the organizations that “helps” advertisers meet GARM standards is NewsGuard, which rates American media on supposedly apolitical criteria. According to NewsGuard, it helps identify so-called “misinformation” that is “inappropriate for advertising support.”
NewsGuard is notorious for ranking Left-wing media companies as consistently more reliable than Right-wing outlets, and for its skepticism of the COVID lab leak theory, now known to be increasingly more credible.
Guidelines for regulation of “misinformation,” like the kind of guidelines pushed by GARM and WFA, have even impacted independent content creators.
“So, for example, my friend Matt Walsh, he was demonetized on YouTube. Why? Well, because he says that men are not women. The same was true on TikTok, another GARM member where Daily Wire hosts are routinely hit with content strikes and various bans for saying things like men are not women,” Shapiro said, contrasting the platform’s treatment of transgender-identifying activist Dylan Mulvaney.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
The partnership has made even some lawmakers concerned. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed officials from GARM and the WFA, saying that the two appeared to be facilitating “collusion among their members in a manner that may violate U.S. antitrust law.”
The end goal of the initiatives, Shapiro explained, is to control information and restrict what people can and cannot be exposed to.
“They want you to see what they want you to see. And they will work to prevent anyone from disseminating information they don’t pre-approve. They are determining what you see, what you hear, what you watch. And that’s dangerous,” he said.
WATCH: