I promised I would report on the Twitter Files thread on covid when it came out.
David Zweig, a writer based in New York, dropped the first of the Twitter Files devoted to COVID. As is the case with the other Twitter Files authors, he isn’t known for being a right-wing pundit (he has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine).
My Twitter account has been shadow-banned as my tweets promoting alternative theories and ideas from reputable sources have been labeled “misinformation.” Supposed “fact-checkers” challenged my now-proven correct assertions.
Zweig’s analysis confirms all of my suspicions….and then some.
As noted in the previous series of Twitter files, representatives from various agencies pressured Twitter personnel to direct the tweet steam to promote specific narratives. This was true under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
When the Biden administration took over, the pressure on social media companies increased considerably, especially against “anti-vaxxers.”
The pressure was intense.
In its pathetic attempt to meet the Biden administration’s demands while meekly attempting to protect free speech on the platform, Twitter made three significant mistakes: 1) Using bots, 2) Relying on foreign contractors as content moderators, and 3) Allowing biased executives to prune the decision trees to determine the fate of specific tweets.
This meant many essential voices in the covid debate, which turned out to be correct, were silenced at critical times.
One of the critical experts whose opinions were given the “narrative treatment” was Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. He suggested that it should only be given to those at high risk, and Kulldorff asserted that children and those with natural immunity would not need it for post-infection.
His tweets were then labeled “misinformation” and throttled.
Bots would act on “tattles,” the term used for complaints by Twitter users. Apparently, vaccine-dogmatic tweeters didn’t appreciate the correct take on children’s deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But accurate information, supportive of the pro-vaccine-narrative, was allowed to stand.
Dr. Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for “misinformation.” The suspension is an example of the free-speech-destroying level of bias in the covid review process on the platform.
How bad was the human bias at Twitter? So bad that ex-FBI official and Twitter General Council James Baker had an attack of the vapors when President Donald Trump tweeted not to be afraid of covid after he recovered from his infection.
Zweig’s analysis concludes a series of statements that express views I also share: If the robust debate had been allowed to occur, better decisions could have been made that would have led to less destructive outcomes.
Zweig has an expanded version of his thread at The Free Press.
I want to conclude with the most insightful comment I read while reviewing this thread.
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