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Notes -
Twitter Files 10
Another thread, another author writing for the Twitter Files. Link
David Zweig writes the following.
Twitter and other important internet platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) were in meetings with the Trump WH since the start of the pandemic to help combat misinformation. The Trump WH was concerned with 5G conspiracies, "runs on grocery stores", and "panic buying".
The Biden WH on the other hand was concerned about Covid. They wanted high-profile anti-vaxx accounts taken offline, noting people like Alex Berenson. The justification was that Covid misinformation was killing lots of people.
Twitter did not immediately capitulate, they were internally hesitant and debating as to whether to suppress people spouting arguments that went against government positions on the topic. But this does not mean that they didn't suppress people.
Twitter's moderation, as you might expect, consists of machine-learning bots at the first layer, then contracted moderators from the Phillipines, and lastly review by "higher level employees" (implied American, or familiar with the culture).
Twitter took the establishment position on Covid, sure, but this went far beyond just applying the "misinformation" tag to people saying vaccines don't work or that Covid is a hoax. It went as far as slapping that label on anyone saying anything that contradicted the mainstream CDC position on anything Covid-related or Covid-narrative-related. In most cases, the same message was seen ("Misleading: Learn why health officials recommend the vaccine for most people") and could no longer be interacted with. Some examples:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, argued that not everyone needed to take a vaccine, and that it was good for old people and their caretakers, but children and people with natural immunity were fine.
@KellyKGA cited CDC statistics to argue that Covid was not the leading cause of child deaths from disease.
@_euzebiusz_ cited a study which argued that mRNA vaccines were associated with cardiac arrests.
I have to say, if there was ever a case that reeked of TDS to me, it would be Jim Baker complaining and asking why Donald Trump saying "Don't be afraid of Covid" wasn't a violation of the company's Covid policies, to which Yoel Roth reminded him that it was a "broad, optimistic statement". Or maybe Baker just had a day of Covid-brain, who knows?
In any case, I'm really annoyed that Zweig doesn't talk at all about the Trump WH and what Twitter did or did not do during that time, or about any other requests the Biden WH might have made. Yeah, it's Covid and all that, but are you seriously telling me the Biden WH didn't ask about other topics? At least tell us if so. Tell us about how many requests were made, percentages of fulfilled requests, etc. You could very much do that here and make a stronger, more principled point.
As for what was said, I don't really think it's new. Even if you didn't have the Twitter Files, you could look at the cases that are given as examples and come to the same conclusion - Twitter was suppressing anything that was against establishment narratives on Covid.
P.S: whoever got him his evidence/screenshots should be fired, who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?
Notes from Trump-land: the cognitive dissonance of the Trump fandom being against the Trump vaccines is resolved in pre-pandemic reports that Trump is a germophobe, that he’s a man who trusts the American medical establishment including big pharma. It’s only natural that one man (no matter how smart and big-league clever) couldn’t be absolutely right on everything.
Also, he had Mike Pence (out of the fandom’s good graces since saying he wouldn’t halt or delay the tally on 1/6) run the Federal task force on the coronavirus. So, if fans can’t swallow the idea that Trump was fooled by Big Pharma, at least they can find solace in swamp Pence being in with the conspiracy. (“We should have trusted the fly all along.”)
Easier path to resolution from my (admittedly tiny) corner of Trump-land - expedited development of vaccines was a good idea, was executed better than could reasonably be expected with the American federal government obstacles, and the vaccines represented an honest best effort to handle COVID-19. They may have even worked fairly well against vanilla COVID, although that's not entirely clear and became irrelevant in short order. There was no grand conspiracy, the vaccines aren't particularly dangerous, they're just incredibly disappointing when it comes to stopping variant transmission. Trump did approximately nothing wrong with regard to executive action on the vaccines.
The sins around vaccination have nothing to do with development and everything to do with the mandates (both the ones that survived challenges and the ones that were eventually struck down). These mandates were policies of the Biden administration and/or other entities following the federal lead on the topic. With regard to vaccines, the simple resolution to this set of claims rounds to Trump Good, Biden Bad.
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Is that really the argument? Seems odd, since that has been standard procedure for vaccines since the creation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986.
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Can we at least give some of the due necessary to the reasonable arguments for waving liability? In the middle of an ongoing pandemic that threatens million of lives you actually do have a pretty good case that a potentially dangerous vaccine is more useful than no vaccine at all and that is realistically your alternative if pharma companies feel as though they need enough rounds of testing to mitigate this additional liability. If they were only give to the very high risk populations and had some huge greater than 10% chance of complications that might still be a good play. The calculous is much different when forced on everyone but that's a different objection.
Just FYI, this isn't how you mention people here. You would use "@" instead of "/u/".
Did you mean to reply to someone else?
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