Twitter Files Reveal How Expert Opinions Contrasting the CDC were Censored Under Both Administrations
Per David Zweig on Twitter
Since Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, one push made by the billionaire was to forward free speech and reveal the mistakes of how the social platform was handled before his takeover. Musk launched a series of "Twitter Files," a form of news on the platform, with its latest edition revealing how expert opinions that went against CDC guidelines were labeled as misinformation.
The Twitter Files series by journalist David Zweig revealed that the US government pressured Twitter and other social media to handle which COVID-19 content gets elevated and which ones get suppressed. The series showed how both administrations, the former Trump and the present Biden, made moves regarding filtering COVID content.
Meeting notes revealed that the Trump administration was concerned about panic buying. The White House held meetings with major tech companies, including Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and several others tech companies.
The Biden administration, however, was more focused on anti-vaxxer accounts in the summer of 2021, with the President saying allowing vaccine information to spread was, in fact, killing people. The notes revealed in the Twitter Files series specifically highlighted Alex Berenson as included in the high-profile anti-vaxxer accounts.
Berenson filed a lawsuit against Twitter which led to a settlement. The legal process revealed that Twitter received direct pressure from the White House to push them to take action against the high-profile anti-vaxxer accounts.
Additional notes revealed how the Biden team was unsatisfied with how the social platform was handling the situation. Employees would often debate different cases but eventually suppressed views that conflicted with the White House's official position, especially from doctors and scientific experts.
One major platform that the platform had was that it relied on bots to moderate content along with contractors from places like the Philippines to help expedite the process of moderation despite not being experts.
One major incident where Twitter was spotted mislabeling content was with Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, who had contradicting opinions with the CDC resulting in his tweet, despite being an expert, labeled as "misleading."
Kulldorff: "Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is a scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should."
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