Latest Twitter Files Shows Stanford’s “Virality Project” Flagged Real Covid Science as ‘Disinformation’
The project “accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.”
The latest installment of the Twitter Files has dropped, and it is astonishing, indeed.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi examined Stanford University’s ‘Virality Project,’ which was ostensibly meant to combat “disinformation.” Actually, however, it appears to have targeted COVID content that ran counter to the establishment narrative.
According to its website, the objective of the Virality Project, which was launched in May 2020, was “to detect, analyze, and respond to incidents of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation across online ecosystems, and ultimately mitigate the impact of narratives which would otherwise undermine the public’s confidence in the safety of these processes in the United States.”
…Taibbi began the Twitter Files by attacking what he called “The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine” by citing its weekly briefings, one from June 2021 saying Spring 2020 emails made public from Dr. Anthony Fauci about gain of function research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “has been used to exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci and in US public health institutions” and will “foment Increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.”
2.“The release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Spring 2020 emails… has been used to exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci.”
“Increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.” pic.twitter.com/VX2NuONdOA— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
There was a long list of narrative violations identified by the Virality Project as ‘disinformation,’ especially those that targeted former White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.
4.All were characterized as “potential violations” or disinformation “events” by the Virality Project, a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billons of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
In reality, the Virality Project was in a public-private partnership in the form of a censorship machine.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whose lawsuit is shattering Biden administration coverups, described the program: Federal health officials in the Surgeon General’s Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services collaborated in a “censorship enterprise called the Virality Project, which procures the censorship of enormous quantities of First Amendment-protected speech.”
Disinformation warriors worked overtime to suppress “false” claims about the side effects of COVID vaccine, especially the true claims. Since the Food and Drug Administration officially (and speedily) approved COVID vaccines, any reports of side effects were automatically disinformation.
The Virality Project recommended that social-media companies suppress “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy.” The project “routinely framed real testimonials about [vaccine] side effects as misinformation, from ‘true stories’ of blood clots from AstraZeneca vaccines to a New York Times story about vaccine recipients who contracted the blood disorder thrombocytopenia.”
9.Two, it accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
Twitter was one of six social media platforms that came under scrutiny.
12. March 2, 2021: "We are beginning to ramp up our notification process to platforms.” In addition to the top-7 platforms, VP soon gained "visibility" to “alternative platforms such as Gab, Parler, Telegram, and Gettr” – near-total surveillance of the social media landscape. pic.twitter.com/HEVXEtxuug
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
The Virality Project also targeted discussions about vaccine passports, warning that such posts “have driven a larger anti-vaccination narrative about the loss of rights and freedoms.”
15. In one email to Twitter, VP addressed what it called the “vaccine passport narrative,” saying “concerns” over such programs “have driven a larger anti-vaccination narrative about the loss of rights and freedoms.”
This was framed as a "misinformation" event. pic.twitter.com/ZdbKE1tFac— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
“Disinformation” supported by the Virality Project included assertions that breakthrough covid infections are “extremely rare events.”
24.The VP in April 2021 mistakenly described “breakthrough” infections as “extremely rare events” that should not be inferred to mean “vaccines are ineffective.” pic.twitter.com/tlACZeRkU5
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
The template that the Virality Project used to screen out counter-narrative posts was entirely created by politically connected and compliant “experts.”
31.The Virality Project was specifically not based on “assertions of fact,” but public submission to authority, acceptance of narrative, and pronouncements by figures like Anthony Fauci. The project’s central/animating concept was, “You can’t handle the truth.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
The government was a key partner in Virality Project suppression efforts.
43.VP would later say it partnered with “several government agencies,” including the Office of the Surgeon General and the CDC. It reportedly also worked with DHS’s CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and GEC, among others. pic.twitter.com/WUlrkFk7JX
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
Taibbi reached a chilling conclusion to his thread.
https://t.co/6whUaYR1ja recap: America’s information mission went from counterterrorism abroad, to stopping “foreign interference” from reaching domestic audiences, to 80% domestic content, much of it true. The “Disinformation Governance Board” is out; but truth-policing is not.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
According to its website, the Virality Project is a “coalition of research entities focused on supporting real-time information exchange between the research community, public health officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, and social media platforms.” Given the recent treatment of a conservative judge at Stanford University, one can reasonably assume that its participants are unwilling to entertain any sensible argument and take great pleasure in obliterating opponents. This is not a good look for any institution that presents itself as promoting good science.
I am grateful that the truth of the “disinformation” campaign has been revealed. I hope this will help the effort to get all the science related to covid and the vaccines published and available so everyone can make fully informed decisions about the health risks and precautions that are pertinent to them.
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Comments
It’s amazing, but not at all surprising, that the corrupt media establishment continue to all but ignore the ongoing revelations of the Twitter Files.
No Covid amnesty for anyone who authored, enforced, encouraged or enabled the disastrous Covid response. Is we can’t drive them out of society in shame then at least fire the public employees, refuse all future grant money and govt contracts to anyone involved along with their employers.
You’re too kind. Public hangings for those whose policies destroyed lives and livelihoods, after a fair trial of course. Meaning “fair” by the same standards they afforded us.
Stanford is no longer a serious institution.
It’s part of a larger mosaic, which is obvious by now, as it plays out every day.
We have largely become as a country what we abhor. We owe it to Obama more than anyone else, and his acolytes have made it much worse.
Hopefully, the breaking point approaches and the woke charade will assume its rightful place in American infamy.
I know this is sci-fi utopian stuff, but go with me for a moment. What if there were…
— a way to comment about something online, to point out the flaws, connect other information, make a different argument. Like if you could, yourself write and post whatever you watn.
— and a way to connect your correctives to the WrongThink, like a “link” to coin a term, readers could see or even follow, connect ing the two.
— and even, and I know this is crazy, some way to assemble “back links”, and rank what gets shown by how many people comment on in. Some Covid Gnome’s oracular pronouncement that gets a bunch of crazytalk push-back will itself get more attention, get “ranked” higher as a result, from that.
If only there were some way to openly and freely debunk the nonsense and help people find The Things That Are True. That would get the right word out, and make the whackadoodles look stupid all at once.
I know. I’m dreaming.
I am honestly totally confused by your post. You seem to be arguing that people should have posted their own tweets or posts to counter the false narratives that were being pushed during the COVID pandemic. The implication is that since they didn’t, their complaints now amount to “sour grape-ism.” If I misunderstood what you were trying to say, I apologize.
But if the above summary was correct, and you are not merely a troll, how have you missed the whole point that many, many people did exactly what you suggested and (through a variety of means detailed in previous posts in the Twitter Files series) those posts were banned, blocked, shadow-banned, prevented from being liked and shared, etc.? One of the main points of this series has been that a public-private partnership with government funding was putting a massive effort into making sure that most people (those not searching for alternative news sources such as LI) using the most common means of accessing information would not have heard other points of view than the “accepted” narrative.
Since the government was involved in this censorship, this was a massive violation of First Amendment rights.
Irony is can be confusing, no matter how blatant. Allow me to try to help(*)…
I’m arguing against what I’m explicitly saying. Against the text; for the inverse subtext. Making the blatant look stupid, to argue that it is … stupid. Most descriptive it’s being sardonic, as in “scornfully mocking” through irony.
If only there were these hypothetical technologies, which would do exactly what they are trying to do with censorship, but better. Oh, wait, those techs already exist.
I mock the clowns who think they can censor Teh Interwebz: first, because the tech works against them(**); second, because censoring counter-arguments shows they don’t much believe in their own(***); and third, because they are constantly shown a better approach to getting the word out by the very people they keep trying to stifle. If it wasn’t working for the opposition, they wouldn’t try to shut it down.
So, actually, yes, trolling, but our humble correspondent got it exactly backwards as to who is being trolled.
(*) Is there an irony variation of Brandolini’s law: it takes 10 times more work to elaborate irony, than it does to question it?
(**) The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it. (I don’t recall the attribution off top of my head.) You can’t stop the signal. (If you know attribution for that one, you know.)
(***) The palmed card here — and The Apparatus loves to make “arguments” palming cards — is presupposing that they are trying to convince, as if the people they are trying to reach have understanding, can be convinced, or will act on what they come to understand. Propaganda also works to stampede thoughtless and frightened livestock — if that’s the messaging they use on you, that’s what they think you are.
This VP thing was obviously named for it’s overlord, AlGore, our cultural expert on “inconvenient truths”, and inventor of the internet.
If anybody would know about this stuff, he would.
Taibi clearly demonstrates that the only narrative that the Deep State wanted disseminated was a narrative that refused to consider the possibility that the pandemic began with its being created in Wuhan thanks to a grant approved by Fauci
They can’t ever be wrong, because the Authoritah they want to claim requires that they be infallible.
Absent the notion of a really, real world, they don’t need anything to be “true”, they just need you to believe it.
Interesting, tho, how they live their lives like the real world has the last say, while they keep trying to steer yours as if it does not.
Well,. at least it’s gratifying that in all those arguments I had with so called internet experts that I was correct every time. But this raises two major points. The first is what happened to our cynicism where we question everything and refuse to accept proof based on hand waving? The second is what happened to our educational system? I knew everything said about COVID was a lie because I know my high school biology. How has our collective IQ decreased so much and why have we lost so much confidence in our own knowledge?
“The first is what happened to our cynicism where we question everything and refuse to accept proof based on hand waving?”
In response to patently bogus narratives and peer pressure, people are cutting off their dicks and telling other people it’s not OK for them to be white.
I fear we’re far beyond the point you describe.
The top people fighting the “disinformation” are quite intelligent. They are fully aware that they are suppressing truth. Power, greed and hubris motivate them.
Is Stanford competent at anything, other than turning out woke graduates?