Twitter Files: US Govt Backed COVID Information Censorship

Improve the News Foundation -

Facts

  • In the latest 'Twitter Files' — reporting on internal emails from the social media giant during COVID — investigative journalist Matt Taibbi focused on Stanford University’s Virality Project — a federally-funded initiative aimed at 'detecting and mitigating the impact of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines.'1
  • However, Taibbi's findings showed that the Virality Project encouraged Twitter to censor 'stories of true vaccine side effects' and 'true posts which could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy.'1
  • The initiative also recommended censoring posts discussing 'breakthrough' infections — cases in which vaccinated people are infected. It also suggested the same treatment for posts discussing natural immunity or suggestions that COVID was leaked from a lab; it even went as far as stating that 'worrisome jokes' should be restricted.2
  • 'All were characterized as 'potential violations' or disinformation 'events' by the Virality Project, a 'sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions [sic] of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs,' Taibbi reported.3
  • Aside from Twitter, the emails show Project Virality had the same arrangements in place with Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, TikTok, and Pinterest.3

Sources: 1New York Post, 2Breitbart and 3FOX News.

Narratives

  • Right narrative, as provided by New York Post. This story is a scandal and as Orwellian as it gets. During a time when accurate information was most badly needed, tax-payer money was going to a project which worked with all the major social media platforms to control political messaging and censor content that was knowingly true at the time, or has since shown to be accurate. Is there any regard for speech and the Constitution?
  • Left narrative, as provided by Reason.com. Matt Taibbi's so-called 'investigative journalism' has been widely criticized by Democrats and for good reason. Taibbi has been directly commissioned by Elon Musk for what are often biased and out-of-context 'doxx and dump' stories to further Musk's right-leaning agenda. The grossly subjective so-called 'Twitter Files' must be viewed in this light.