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.

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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:

Well, everybody seems to have something to say about the new “Barbie” film, the summer blockbuster that used up so much pink paint on its set designs it actually caused a pink paint shortage, spreading panic among people who panic over pink paint. The film has inspired so much online commentary, it also threatens to cause a shortage of pixels, spreading panic among people who panic over pixels, who turn out to be the same people who panic over pink paint, and climate change and other meaningless nonsense.

On the Right, commentators thought the film sucked because it was a shrill, man-hating feminist screed. On the Left, commentators thought the film sucked but had to pretend to like it because it was a shrill, man-hating feminist screed. The only person who seemed to enjoy the movie was Ben Shapiro, who loved it so much he actually bought his own Barbie and played with it until the fire department came and put it out.

So many people have commented on “Barbie” that there’s very little left for me to say. So I’ve decided to do something totally original by offering my comments on “Barbie” without actually watching the movie. Now you may ask yourself: What’s the point of that? And the point is: I don’t have to watch a movie that’s about Barbie. Because frankly, if I have to choose between watching a movie about Barbie and sticking a screwdriver so far into my ear that only the handle sticks out, you’ll soon have to call me Old Screwdriver Ear as in the sentence, “Boy, that Old Screwdriver Ear sure didn’t want to watch a movie about Barbie.” And that would be true. Not caring about “Barbie” is kind of a passion with me. It’s the reason I forced my daughter to grow up by sticking a pistol in her face and saying, “Grow up, kid, or I’ll blast you.” And all right, it wasn’t a real pistol. But she didn’t know that, and you can bet she grew up in a big hurry.

Anyway, instead of watching “Barbie,” I went to see “Oppenheimer,” a movie so long that when it premiered in Tokyo, the Japanese surrendered again. And now that I haven’t seen “Barbie” for a full three hours plus trailers, here’s my review.

As you know, feminists hate “Barbie” because she’s shapely and feminine and blond and wouldn’t really become an astronaut or a surgeon or a cowgirl because a woman who’s shapely, feminine and blonde can have a totally happy life without bothering to become any of those things. But to me all this feminist hostility is misplaced. I mean, Barbie has no vagina so she can’t get laid, her breasts don’t give milk so she’d make a lousy mother, and her head is made of plastic — so to me she sounds just like all the other feminists. Anyway, I sat down to not watch this movie not knowing what to expect.

And frankly, I hated it. “Barbie” is the worst film I’ve never seen. It’s even worse than “Real Women have Curves,” which was so bad I didn’t watch it twice. To show you how bad “Barbie was,” let me sum up the plot, which I know nothing about because I didn’t watch the movie. I didn’t even read the summary on Wikipedia because I didn’t want to have to walk around with some damn screwdriver stuck in my ear.

“Barbie” begins in Barbieland, where it’s not very exciting because the only man around is Ken and he’s obviously gay or he wouldn’t dress like that. Also, the roller blades are a giveaway. Barbie decides to go to the real world where the women complain to her that being a woman is hard because of men. So obviously, this isn’t the real real world but there are some similarities, like the women complaining all the time and blaming men. Finally, Barbie meets a wise woman who explains that being a woman is very hard because of men. So Barbie returns to Barbieland and starts to complain about everything while blaming men, and Barbieland becomes just like reality only plastic.

So that’s my review. And if you listened to this and thought, “What the hell was the point of that?” you may have missed the part where I explained that I didn’t have to watch “Barbie.”

Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. He is an award-winning novelist, Hollywood screenwriter, and popular satirist. Klavan is the author of “When Christmas Comes” and “Strange Habit of Mind,” the first two novels in the USA Today best-selling Cameron Winter Mystery series. The third installment, “The House of Love and Death,” releases on October 31, 2023, and is now available for Pre-order.

Follow Klavan on Twitter: @andrewklavan

This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.