Following an explosive investigation into the Global Disinformation Index, viewed 8 million times on X/Twitter, UnHerd has been contacted by dozens of lawmakers and activists raising concerns about rating agencies like the GDI. In this update podcast, Freddie Sayers addresses government officials on the chilling effect of censorship and makes a case to defund the 'disinformation industry'.

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UnHerd's Flo Read meets Jonathan Haidt to discuss the dangers of modern technology for younger generations.

Watch it on the UnHerd website:

Listen to the podcast: https://plnk.to/unherd?to=page

Since 2012, youth mental health across the West has steadily declined. Jonathan Haidt is an American social psychologist, co-author of bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind and author of the new book The Anxious Generation. His theory is simple: the introduction of smartphones to children around 2011 accelerated the crisis of social media addiction. He joins UnHerd's Florence Read to discuss parenting, porn and the age of anxiety.

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The verdicts of “ratings agencies” such as the GDI, within the complex machinery that serves online ads, are a little-understood mechanism for controlling the media conversation. In UnHerd’s case, the GDI verdict means that we only received between 2% and 6% of the ad revenue normally expected for an audience of our size. Meanwhile, neatly demonstrating the arbitrariness and subjectivity of these judgements, Newsguard, a rival ratings agency, gives UnHerd a 92.5% trust rating, just ahead of the New York Times at 87.5%.

So, what are these “ratings agencies” that could be the difference between life and death for a media company? How does their influence work? And who funds them? The answers are concerning and raise serious questions about the freedom of the press and the viability of a functioning democracy in the internet age.

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