David Zweig has been tasked by Musk to go through Twitter files about covid
The government censorship of covid information began with Trump . He reached out to big Tech to suppress unwanted news stories in the early days of the pandemic. He was concerned about what he called "misinformation" about runs on the stores and wanted social media sited to downplay them.
The problem was there were runs on stores so it was not misinformation. Meetings with the Trump White House were attended by Twitter ,Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.
When Clueless Joe took over the censorship went into overdrive. The message was to be very afraid and do what we tell you to do.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory concerning what the WHO called an “infodemic,” and called on social media platforms to do more to shut down “misinformation.”
Infodemic (who.int)
Surgeon general confronting health misinformation - DocumentCloud
“Misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health,” Murthy said during remarks to reporters Thursday at the White House. “We must confront misinformation as a nation. Lives are depending on it.”
Given the role the internet plays in spreading health misinformation, Murthy said technology companies and social media platforms must make meaningful changes to their products and software to reduce the spread of misinformation while increasing access to authoritative, fact-based sources.
Too often, he said, the platforms are built to encourage, not counter, the spread of misinformation.
“We are asking them to step up,” Murthy said. “We can’t wait longer for them to take aggressive action.”
Surgeon general urges US fight against COVID misinformation – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale
Both the Trump and Clueless administrations wanted the suppression of posts by anti-vaxxers .
Geoffrey M. Young on Twitter: "David Zweig: Internal Twitter emails described angry White House staffers meeting with Twitter employees. The Trump & Biden administrations wanted Twitter to suppress tweets even more vigorously if they questioned the government line on vaccines and masks. https://t.co/HPocxIBE1f" / Twitter
Specifically they were concerned about Alex Berenson, a journalist skeptical of lockdowns and mRNA vaccines, who had hundreds of thousands of followers .
David Zweig on Twitter: "8. When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson: https://t.co/yBNeF2YbD3" / Twitter
Clueless got on his soap box and announced that social media was killing people.Berenson was suspended by Twitter .
Berenson sued . Discovery revealed that Clueless was indeed censoring covid related postings they did not agree with. The administration was angry with Twitter for not being aggressive enough in censoring . Although some Twitter employees pushed back; generally Twitter did what the administration wanted.
David Zweig on Twitter: "14. But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing." / Twitter
Twitter outsourced many of it's filtering through bots and Philipine contractors .
They were given decision trees to aid in the process, but tasking non experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data was destined for a significant error rate .
TRUE experts were suspended and their content was suppressed.
David Zweig on Twitter: "19. Inevitably, dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information." / Twitter
Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School tweeted that only the high risk population needed to be vaxxed .
Twitter labelled the comment misleading and shut off "liked" features and replies ...all but stopping the Tweet from being seen . Internal discussion inside Twitter said that it violated Twitter's covid misinformation policy even though his view was in line with the covid policies of many nations .
David Zweig on Twitter: "24. In my review of internal files, I found countless instances of tweets labeled as “misleading” or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views." / Twitter
Tweets about the links between the vax and cardiac arrest in youth was labelled misinformation even though it's source was a peer reviewed study published in Nature
Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after he tweeted another peer reviewed study about covid vax and sperm count.
Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors - PubMed (nih.gov)
He had also tweeted that the flu was more lethal to children than covid . That was just a fact.....but an inconvenient fact that went against official administration's narrative.
One tweet by Trump was flagged after he got covid and said he was doing fine and to not be afraid. James Baker the former FBI attorney embedded in Twitter asked why telling people to not be afraid wasn't a violation of Twitter policy .
David Zweig on Twitter: "34. In a surreal exchange, Jim Baker, at the time Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, asks why telling people to not be afraid wasn’t a violation of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy. https://t.co/SxvOKcvaT7" / Twitter
Zweig concludes his report with these comments .
Twitter made a decision, via the political leanings of senior staff, and govt pressure, that the public health authorities’ approach to the pandemic – prioritizing mitigation over other concerns – was “The Science” .
Information that challenged that view, such as showing harms of vaccines, or that could be perceived as downplaying the risks of Covid, especially to children, was subject to moderation, and even suppression. No matter whether such views were correct or adopted abroad.
What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter and other social media platforms—not to mention the mainstream press—about the origins of Covid, about lockdowns, about the true risks of Covid in kids, and much more?
This goes way beyond a power play by government to censor and suppress information ;and the unholy alliance it had with Big tech to censor by proxy.... as bad as that is .Children across the country were prevented from attending school for more than a year. Some made up for it because they had the means to "Zoom " and virtually learn . But many poor and underprivileged children did not .
How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Student Learning in Ohio | John Glenn (osu.edu)
5-4.pdf (harvard.edu)
People died alone as relatives were prevented from visiting due to lock downs . Businesses were shut down unnecessarily . Those who could work were prevented from working . Some were paid off by the government but not all of them. Other "essential" workers were forced to work when they were in the high risk category .
Next up on the files will be an extensive look at Herr Doctor Fauci's role in this travesty .