ByBonchie |11:30 AM on December 26, 2022
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.
The revelations of past Twitter Files drops have been stunning, to say the least, with direct FBI involvement in the quashing of free speech being perhaps the biggest bombshell. The uncovering of corruption isn’t over yet, though. Not by a long shot.
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The next major installment is, for my money, the one we’ve been waiting for. Namely, it covers Twitter’s suppression of speech in regard to COVID-19, and there are some surprising reveals included. For example, the Trump administration didn’t have its hands clean in regard to coordinating with Twitter to combat “misinformation.”
5. Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for @thefp showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
7. It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others. pic.twitter.com/OgOrRxBBBW
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
I may be a partisan, but I’m not a hack, and my consistent standard on “misinformation” has been that the government should not play a role in policing it. There’s simply too much that can happen as far as abuse of power and violations of the First Amendment to let politicians and bureaucrats touch that third rail. The Trump administration may have had good intentions, and their transgressions may have not been nearly as egregious, but it’s still disappointing to see that the former president played that game.
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Of course, Joe Biden took things much further.
9. In the summer of 2021, president Biden said social media companies were “killing people” for allowing vaccine misinformation. Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month.
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
12. Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more. pic.twitter.com/lZTQV3yKeZ
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
As Zweig goes on to explain, Twitter eventually began to shape its moderation around official White House views. That meant suppressing or outright banning medical professionals who were sharing evidence-based views contrary to the “narrative” about things like natural immunity and mask efficacy. Much of that was done by bots which were trained via machine learning to spot certain words and phrases.
Further, moderation activities were outsourced to places like the Philippines where low-level workers were expected to adjudicate serious discussions about things like vaccine side effects. Obviously, that led to some very bad results if you value free speech, and in many cases, truth. Lastly, top executives at Twitter were setting the tone, both by giving the inputs for the AI and telling the moderation teams what to look for.
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Zweig goes on to give some examples of medical professionals who were suppressed or banned, with Dr. Martin Kulldorff being “Exhibit A.”
21. Internal emails show an “intent to action” by a moderator, saying Kulldorff’s tweet violated the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy and claimed he shared “false information.” pic.twitter.com/lq9QOP8h27
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
23. After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a “Misleading” label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform: pic.twitter.com/Qa1HpaEray
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
Oddly enough, I remember seeing that tweet from Kulldorff when he made it and being surprised that it got labeled misinformation. Natural immunity was not a new concept, and for someone to say that those possessing it didn’t need to rush out and get vaccinated should have not been controversial at all. Yet, because it clashed with the White House’s vaccination message, which was to jab every living human being, it was quickly suppressed and labeled as misinformation (falsely, mind you).
Here’s another example of a bot flagging a post and then a human upholding what should have been a reversed decision.
26. Internal records showed that a bot had flagged the tweet, and that it received many “tattles” (what the system amusingly called reports from users). That triggered a manual review by a human who– despite the tweet showing actual CDC data–nevertheless labeled it “Misleading”
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
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Using the CDC’s own data to state an objective fact would get you suppressed under Twitter’s old regime if it went against the official narrative. That’s how committed they were to a certain set of talking points. That those talking points came directly from the government (namely, the White House and CDC) only makes things all the worse.
And to be sure, what I’ve highlighted here is just the tip of the iceberg. Zweig’s thread continues from there, and we haven’t even gotten the internal documents yet dealing with Dr. Anthony Fauci and his team’s intrusions. I’d suspect those are coming, and they are going to be telling. Stay tuned.
