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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?
As with most conspiracy facts, when they come out, the significance is not that they are new. The significance is that we have yet another proof that the crazy conspiracy theory guys who said it from the start were actually right all along. And The Experts (TM) who denied that is is about controlling the narrative and suppressing the debate, and claimed it's only to combat "dangerous health misinformation" that could "hurt people", lied to us all along. It's not new, just now we have the receipts.
Said what from the start? There's quite a bit of nonsense in that category, most of which is still not backed up by these press releases.
The people who were relatively level-headed at the start, saying things like "kids under 16 really have no reason to use up doses," have been reasonably validated. Those paranoid about microchips and 5G and injecting
bleachdisinfectant have not. Keep that in mind before trying to encourage people to follow the independent free-thinkers. I still don't believe their success will generalize.Why do contrarians have to answer for every tinfoil conspiracy? Where are the generalized successes of the expert class in discussing controversial issues?
If the contrarians have, indeed, went with the line "vaccine is not as efficient in combatting disease or particularly preventing its spread as was claimed particularly during the most fervent phase of vaccine advocacy", of course they don't have to answer for tinfoil conspiracies.
However, there are also people who did, say, claim that the vaccine is going to kill or sterilize something like a quarter or a half of the vaccinated population in a very short order, few months to an year, and who are now doing victory laps when it is revealed that, indeed, vaccine is not as efficient in combatting disease or particularly preventing its spread as was claimed particularly during the most fervent phase of vaccine advocacy, even though that's quite a different claim from the most lurid vaccine genocide visions.
Birthrates are down, cardiac incidents are up.
If you expect random High-school graduate citizens taking a side in a political debate to quantitatively accurate instead of merely directionally correct, then you're holding them to a higher standard that the government, media, and the academic-medical-industrial complex have held themselves for the past 3 years.
Again, "birthrates are down and cardiac incidents are up" - both something that could have multiple different explanations, such as COVID itself, lockdown aftereffects and other social developments than Covid - is qualitively different from the most lurid predictions of mass death and sterility, and even if one would manage to ascertain a partal correlation with vaccines, something I haven't actually even seen anyone conclusively show from the data, that would be far from something allowing the lurid-prediction-makers to start declaring they were correct all along.
Generally the random high-school-graduate citizens also generally don't develop these views by themselves but by trusting media figures, politicians and academic-medical-industrial figures - sure, these would be instances of the contrarian type, but still generally claiming credibility on the basis of their credentials etc.
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