Twitter Files Part 10: Trump, Biden White Houses leaned on Twitter to moderate content during COVID

On Monday, part 10 of what has been dubbed “The Twitter Files” was released by Independent Journalist David Zweig. This batch exposes how the White House, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration, pressured Twitter to moderate content during COVID.

So far the files have shown what many on the right suspected and that is that Twiter has gone to great lenghts to silence people based off of what side of the political isle they may fall and how the Federal government pressured Twitter to silence certain kinds of content that they deem to be “misinformation”. This latest batch of files gets into how the federal government pressured Twitter to moderate certain kinds of content involving COVID, while elevating others.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Trump administration was concerned that the pandemic could lead to panic buying so they went to Big tech companies for help to combat any “misinformation” that was coming out, involving runs on grocery stores. They wanted to present the picture that everything was fine and that people weren’t panic buying, even though they were.

6. At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores. pic.twitter.com/duzk2I1Y7T— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

The meetings also included other tech companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

7. It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others. pic.twitter.com/OgOrRxBBBW— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

The pressure coming from the White House for Big Tech to censor COVID “misinformation” continued under President Biden. One of the first meeting requests from the new administration was with Twitter Executives. The focus was on what they deemed to be “anti-vaxxer accounts”. One of these accounts was former New York Times Reporter Alex Berenson.

8. When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on “anti-vaxxer accounts.” Especially Alex Berenson: pic.twitter.com/yBNeF2YbD3— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

In the summer of 2021, President Biden claimed that social media companies were “killing people” for allowing “vaccine misinformation” on their platforms. Just hours after Biden’s comments, Berenson was suspended from Twitter before being kicked off entirely a month later.

Berenson ended up suing Twitter. Twitter was forced to release internal communications involving their decision to ban Berenson from their platform. These internal communications showed that the White House directly pressured Twitter to take action against Berenson.

10. Berenson sued (and then settled with) Twitter. In the legal process Twitter was compelled to release certain internal communications, which showed direct White House pressure on the company to take action on Berenson.

​​https://t.co/CHt0s7ZqfQ pic.twitter.com/dFgRmyRB3z— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

Despite Big Tech’s attempts to silence what they deemed to be COVID “misinformation”, the White House still wasn’t happy and believed that platforms such as Twitter weren’t aggressive enough in combating “misinformation”.

In December 2022, a summary of meetings with the White House showed that Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, showed the White House’s attempt to influence the content that people were allowed to post on Twitter.

12. Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more. pic.twitter.com/lZTQV3yKeZ— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

David Zweig outlines three serious problems with Twitter’s attempt to moderate content.

  1. Much of the content moderation was conducted by bots, trained on machine learning and AI.
  2. Twitter outsourced the moderation to contractors in the Phillipines, who were not health experts and had them moderate topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data.
  3. Higher level employees at Twitter chose the inputs for the bots and decision trees, and decided escalated cases and suspensions. This allowed those with certain viewpoints get to decide what users got to read even if there was real debate on whether that was accurate information or not.

It wasn’t just average people that were questioning things like the effectivness of the masks or vaccines. It was doctors and scientists. Even those in the medical community were deplatformed if they differed at all on the approved narrative coming from the CDC.

One example is Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kulldorff was accused of spreading “false information” when he claimed that the vaccines are only important for the elderly and their caretakers and is not necessary for everyone. Despite being an expert, Dr. Kulldorff was censored, he received a “misleading” label and all replies and likes were shut off.

20. Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter. pic.twitter.com/K3kwQIdzHG— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

Others, such as kelley K, had their replies and likes disabled and received a “misleading” warning label for sharing the CDC’s own data, while those that shared actually misleading data weren’t censored. Despite COVID never being a leading cause in death in children, those that pushed that claim apparently didn’t violate the company’s policies.

25. A tweet by @KelleyKga, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker, with 18K followers, was flagged as “Misleading,” and replies and likes disabled, even though it displayed the CDC’s *own data.* pic.twitter.com/8ABQzYGpXf— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

Even those in the medical community that were commenting on published studies were supressed.

28. Whether by humans or algorithms, content that was contrarian but true was still subject to getting flagged or suppressed

This tweet was labeled “Misleading,” even though the owner of this account, @_euzebiusz_, a physician, was referring to the results of a published study pic.twitter.com/i1MeLFvYQt— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

29. Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for misinformation. One of his strikes was for a tweet referring to the results from a peer reviewed study on mRNA vaccines. pic.twitter.com/Q65KlRwrqs— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, was permanently suspended from Twitter after receiving multiple strikes for “misinformation”. It turns out that just one of the five strikes actually violated Twitter’s policies, but even then he was citing actual data on the flu being much more dangerous to children.

30. A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid. pic.twitter.com/ohlmHFOuQX— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

31. The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children. pic.twitter.com/KT3q7Ee9CA— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

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