Twitter Files: White House pushed Twitter to censor COVID-19 'misinformation'

Misty Severi

December 26, 01:31 PM December 26, 01:31 PM

The White House pressured Twitter to suppress tweets that included "misinformation" about the COVID-19 pandemic, even when Twitter users shared information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the latest string of bombshells from the Twitter Files, the current White House "rigged the COVID debate" by censoring information that was "inconvenient to government policy," discrediting doctors and experts who disagreed with the administration's narrative, and by suppressing ordinary users, including those who shared data from the CDC, journalist David Zweig tweeted Monday.

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The campaign to suppress misinformation about the pandemic began under former President Donald Trump, Zweig said, but was continued under President Joe Biden. Biden's administration focused on removing the accounts of "anti-vaxxers," including former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who was banned in June of 2021.

“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine,” Berenson tweeted about the COVID-19 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.”

Two doctors were among the experts banned by the platform after one claimed that children or adults who already had the virus did not need the vaccine. The other was banned for claiming that the virus was less dangerous for children than the flu, which Zweig claimed was “legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus COVID in children.”

The White House shared its discontent with Twitter's lack of "aggressive" action against those who questioned the vaccine and its critics as recently as earlier this month, according to Zweig, who cited Twitter's head of U.S. public policy.

Zweig also determined that Twitter's moderation was largely done by bots or contractors in places such as the Philippines, where their lack of medical expertise contributed to a large number of errors in its censorship. However, high levels of bias among former Twitter leadership also contributed to the censorship, according to Zweig.

The latest report comes after previous revelations showed that the CIA, FBI, and other government agencies had pressured Twitter to cave to political pressure. The report is part of the "Twitter Files," which refers to the investigation from new Twitter CEO Elon Musk into the previous happenings of the social media platform, including Twitter's handling of Hunter Biden's laptop, the blacklisting of certain conservative accounts, and the decision-making process relating to Trump's suspension.