The Biden administration focused on the removal of “anti-vaxxer accounts.”
The Biden White House pressured Twitter to both “elevate” and “suppress” purported COVID-19 “misinformation” — but ended up “censoring info that was true but inconvenient” to policy makers.
The Biden White House pressured Twitter to both “elevate” and “suppress” purported COVID-19 “misinformation” — but ended up “censoring info that was true but inconvenient” to policymakers, according to the latest edition of the “Twitter Files” revealed Monday.
The coercion campaign during the pandemic began with the Trump administration, but was stepped up under Biden, whose administration was focused on the removal of “anti-vaxxer accounts,” according to Free Press reporter David Zweig.
For example, in June 2021, hours after Biden publicly raged that social media companies were “killing people” by allowing purported vaccine misinformation to propagate, former New York Times reporter and noted vaccine doubter Alex Berenson was banned from the site.
Berenson responded by suing Twitter, forcing the release of internal communications that showed the White House had pressured the company to squash his account.
1. THREAD:
THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine,” Berenson had tweeted.
“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS,” he also wrote.
As recently as this month, Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s head of US public policy, released a summary of meetings with the White House detailing its alleged pressure campaign, according to Zweig.
Culbertson said in her notes that the administration was “very angry” that Twitter had not taken more aggressive action in silencing vaccine critics and wanted the company to do more, files showed.
Among those whom Twitter did clamp down on was Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School
Kulldorff had tweeted in March 2021 that both children and adults who had been previously infected with COVID did not need the vaccine. That was flagged by the site as “misleading” — even though it was in line with the vaccine policies of “numerous other countries,” Zweig wrote.
(if you go to the story link you can view specific tweets)