The Biden administration reportedly attempted to block Twitter users who were spreading COVID-19 misinformation, according to documents.
According to the latest edition of the “Twitter Files,” the Biden White House allegedly pressured Twitter to both “elevate” and “suppress” purported COVID-19 “misinformation.”
However, this campaign allegedly ended up “censoring information that was true but inconvenient” to policymakers.
The coercion campaign reportedly began under the Trump administration but was intensified under the Biden administration, which reportedly focused on removing “anti-vaxxer accounts.” As an example, in June 2021, former New York Times reporter and vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson was banned from Twitter hours after President Biden publicly criticized social media companies for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread.
Berenson subsequently sued Twitter, leading to the release of internal communications showing that the White House had pressured the company to remove his account.
Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter and vaccine skeptic, had tweeted that the COVID-19 vaccine “doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Do not think of it as a vaccine…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.” According to David Zweig, Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s head of US public policy, recently released notes from meetings with the White House that allegedly detail the administration’s pressure campaign on the social media platform to silence vaccine critics.
Culbertson’s notes reportedly show that the White House was “very angry” that Twitter had not taken more aggressive action and wanted the company to do more. Among those targeted by Twitter was Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, who tweeted in March 2021 that both children and adults who had previously been infected with COVID-19 did not need the vaccine.
This tweet was flagged as “misleading” by the site, even though it was in line with the vaccine policies of “numerous other countries,” according to Zweig.
According to the journalist, the recent incident was just the latest in a series of instances in which tweets were labeled as “misleading” or taken down entirely, sometimes leading to account suspensions, simply because they differed from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance or establishment views.
This story is still unfolding.