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.

Delays, news dumps, and disappointment: Everything you need to know about the Twitter Files

Cami Mondeaux

December 05, 07:33 AM December 05, 07:33 AM

After the release of the much-anticipated “Twitter Files,” several conservatives are lamenting what they call unfair censorship of voices on the Right while others say the report isn’t exactly the smoking gun they were hoping for.

The Twitter Files is a collection of documents and internal communications from inside the company that details the behind-the-scenes decision-making of some of the social media platform’s top executives to suppress news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020. Twitter CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has long teased the release of the report after taking control of the company in October as part of his pledge to increase transparency on the site.

Musk teased the release of the files early Friday, announcing that journalist Matt Taibbi would be rolling out the report’s findings at 5 p.m. EST. However, Twitter users were left waiting in anticipation as Musk announced a delay because the company was “double-checking some facts.”

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Just after 6:30 p.m., Taibbi posted a lengthy Twitter thread with a comprehensive dump of the report’s findings that showed the company “took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe.’”

Taibbi shared multiple screenshots of internal conversations between Twitter employees showing certain posts that had been flagged by members of the Biden administration or the Democratic National Committee.

However, he ultimately found there was no evidence showing the government was involved in censoring the story, noting that decision was made at "the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey." Some conservative journalists who have written extensively about the story disputed those findings, lamenting the seemingly lackluster findings of the report.

“I feel that Elon Musk has held back some material,” Miranda Devine, a reporter for the New York Post who has written extensively about the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, told Tucker Carlson on WHD News. “Is he holding something back, or is it just that Facebook really was first out of the blocks to censor the New York Post and Twitter followed suit? So I don’t know. I suspect that Elon Musk has been leaned on, and he’s kept a little bit of information in reserve."

Musk later announced on Saturday during a two-hour Twitter Spaces session that there would be a second information dump related to the Twitter Files and the company’s content moderation policies. It’s unclear whether Musk’s decision to release more files is in response to claims that he is withholding information, nor is it clear when the second information dump will take place.

Musk admitted his knowledge on the Twitter Files “is limited” as he has not read the report himself, but noted it seems to show “a very different standard applied to Republican candidates in the U.S. versus Democrat candidates.”

The CEO also hinted at “more smoking guns” that he wants to release to the public, but it’s not clear when that information will be released. However, he pledged that “the intent is to release all the files.”