Reports of censorship during pandemic

[Pathfinder]

Twitter and Elon Musk Strike Deal for Takeover

The deal marks the close of a dramatic courtship and a sharp change of heart at the social-media network

By Cara LombardoFollow
, Meghan BobrowskyFollow
and Georgia WellsFollow
April 25, 2022 2:53 pm ET

Twitter Inc. on Monday accepted Elon Musk’s bid to take over the company, giving the world’s richest man control over the influential social-media network where he is also among its most powerful users.
...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-and-elon-musk-strike-deal-for-takeover-11650912837?mod=e2tw

[sharon sanders]

It will be interesting to see what happens.

[Emily]

I don't know if it's possible for Musk to achieve his goal of bipartisan free speech on any US platform today. But if he can afford to try, that is his choice. Right now the deal is souring as research reveals that Twitter grossly understated the amount of spam/bot accounts in its SEC filing.

[sharon sanders]

bump this

[Pathfinder]

E69: Elon Musk on Twitter's bot problem...

May 16, 2022

[Emily]

Interesting interview! We enjoyed it.

[Emily]

I checked it out and Amazon does not allow sales to US addresses. They do whatever the government wants. They stopped selling NAC when the FDA made noise about that. It was being used in hospitals to help Covid patients and a company was looking into tweaking it to make it more absorbable, (and patentable.) Long Covid people are saying NAC helps them recover from their symptoms, too.

https://dailyclout.io/amazon-silencing-dr-wolfs-new-book-the-bodies-of-others/

June 3, 2022 • by Steve Bannon's War Room, Rumble
Amazon Silencing Dr. Wolf’s New Book ‘The Bodies Of Others’

In this video, Dr. Naomi Wolf joins Steve Bannon’s War Room discuss the release of her new book The Bodies of Others. While mainstream media and larger stores such as Amazon are limiting sales, Dr. Wolf shares insight on how/where to find her new book directly from the publisher as well as independent book stores...

[Emily]

Twitter is so dumb.

https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/the-pandemic-discussion-forum/952508-twitter-suspends-doctor-for-sharing-study-that-shows-pfizer-vaccine-impacts-semen

[Emily]

Dr. Zelenko has passed away from his rare cancer at 48. He was born in Ukraine, banned on Twitter in the US, and had to leave his community in New York due to the hate. A good man.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/us/vladimir-zelenko-dead.html

[Emily]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10996987/Journalist-Alex-Berenson-reinstated-Twitter-suing-violation-Amendment.html

'The lil bird and I are now the best of friends': Journalist Alex Berenson returns to Twitter as social media giant admits he shouldn't have been banned for questioning COVID vaccines

• Alex Berenson has been reinstated to twitter following an almost 11-month ban
• Berenson, 49, filed a federal lawsuit challenging his ban for 'violating his First Amendment right'
• He was banned in August for questioning the effectiveness of COVID vaccines
• Suit argues that his tweet was a statement of fact, true then as well as now
• Former New York Times reporter had been a noted mask and lockdown skeptic
• Now back on the platform, Berenson wrote: 'All in the past, though! The lil bird and I are now the best of friends'

By James Gordon For Dailymail.com
Published: 22:23 EDT, 8 July 2022 | Updated: 22:47 EDT, 8 July 2022

[Emily]

E69: Elon Musk on Twitter's bot problem...

May 16, 2022

The Musk deal went sour. I was relieved. Imagine if these monkeys could tweet.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/extreme-suffering-15-23-monkeys-205653491.html

“Extreme Suffering”: 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died
Wren Graves
February 11, 2022

[sharon sanders]

Zerohedge is a financial blog. The story linked to something about China. I clicked on it and got this message below.



Warning: this link may be unsafe

https://zerohedge.com

The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy. This link could fall into any of the below categories:

• malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices
• spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience
• violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm
• certain categories of content that, if posted directly on Twitter, are a violation of the Twitter Rules

Back to previous page
Ignore this warning and continue

[Emily]

They might have fixed this by now, but I wasn't logged in. When I was on Zerohedge, I saw that bad news about Walmart...They did well in the last downturn. This is not a good sign.

[Emily]

https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/white-house-specifically-targeted

White House Specifically Targeted Alex Berenson for Covid Censorship, Newly-Released Documents Reveal

Michael P Senger

Aug 12

According to newly-released discovery documents, Andy Slavitt, acting as Senior Advisor to the COVID-19 Response under President Biden, specifically targeted Alex Berenson for censorship due to his views on Covid mRNA vaccines. This is the same Andy Slavitt who argued for a strict, Chinese-style “90% lockdown” in July 2020...

[Mary Wilson]

Thread

Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz
I’ve reached out to Twitter for comment on the platform’s recent spate of removing tweets and banning people’s accounts for sharing factual information, scientific research, and mainstream news articles about the dangers of COVID-19

· Aug 18
Apparently, @TwitterSupport is freezing people's accounts for tweeting research studies, now. Hey, @Medscape, were you aware that your scholarly article is being labeled "COVID disinformation" and that sharing it is apparently a bannable offense?


Taylor Lorenz@TaylorLorenz·
Aug 18

MDs & others sharing info related to the dangers of COVID or promoting the safety of vaccines are saying that Twitter has begun suspending their accounts, removing tweets, & threatening permanent bans. Meanwhile those downplaying COVID’s danger/questioning vaccines have remained


Graham Walker, MD@grahamwalker
· Aug 17
So I'm spreading misinformation by quoting an AAP paper showing a myocarditis rate of 0.03% in 48,000. Meanwhile Høeg quotes a rate of 3.5% in 301 kids and can't even interpret an EKG. Nice work, Twitter.



Taylor Lorenz@TaylorLorenz

Aug 18
Here Twitter flagged someone sharing a link to a Forbes article on long term effects of COVID as anti vaxx


Antonio Caramia@Antonio_Caramia
Jul 24
2 days ago I wrote a mini thread about a Forbes article dealing with lymphopenia and T-cell. According to Twitter Forbes article is "misleading" because "Covid vaccines are safe"



Taylor Lorenz@TaylorLorenz
·
Aug 18
If you’ve recently had a factual tweet about the dangers of COVID or monkeypox removed or your account threatened feel free to DM me screenshots or a link. Would love to get to the bottom of this


Taylor Lorenz@TaylorLorenz
Anothe example
7:36 PM · Aug 18, 2022·Twitter for iPhone


Taylor Lorenz
@TaylorLorenz
·
Aug 18
Replying to
@TaylorLorenz
Another doctor who quoted a line from a New Yorker story on COVID’s long term harm to pregnant people had his tweet removed for misinformation
Quote Tweet

Dr Satoshi Akima FRACP 『秋間聰』
@ToshiAkima
· Aug 14
@TwitterSupport @twitter. There is nothing misleading about the well researched article published by @NewYorker from which @JOHNJOHNSTONED takes the quote in the tweet. This is ridiculous

https://mobile.twitter.com/TaylorLor...19192465022977
__________________________________________________ _______________

Tweet

Taylor Lorenz Retweeted

Brian Vastag@brianvastag

I'm glad she's on this...
@TwitterSafety
is removing tweets that link to journal articles & write-ups of journal articles, including a @medpagetoday article about a large study just published in @TheLancet.

Taylor Lorenz
@TaylorLorenz
· Aug 18
I’ve reached out to Twitter for comment on the platform’s recent spate of removing tweets and banning people’s accounts for sharing factual information, scientific research, and mainstream news articles about the dangers of COVID-19 twitter.com/exceedhergrasp…
Show this thread
8:12 PM · Aug 18, 2022

https://mobile.twitter.com/brianvastag/status/1560434401888022529?cxt=HHwWgsCtvcW046crAAAA

[sharon sanders]

Interesting. Our account is operating fine. I will see what happens today. Apparently idiots are still in charge at twitter. They seem to swing between extremes.

[Emily]

Ouroboros - the Dragon is eating its own tail. Mattias Desmet said this is the natural course of mass formation.

[sharon sanders]

Just wow.....


Over 50 Biden Administration Employees, 12 US Agencies Involved in Social Media Censorship Push: Documents


By Zachary Stieber

September 1, 2022 Updated: September 1, 2022


snip


‘Censorship Enterprise’


Plaintiffs said the massive pressure campaign amounted to a “Censorship Enterprise” because it involved so many officials and agencies.

Government lawyers only identified 45 officials at five agencies—the Department of Homeland Security, CISA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Murthy’s office—who communicated with social media companies on misinformation, although documents they produced showed others were involved, including officials at the Census Bureau and the Departments of Treasury and State.

Responses from the Big Tech companies also revealed more officials involved with the effort.

Meta has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials, including top officials at the White House and the Food and Drug Administration, were in communication with it about content moderation. Many of the officials weren’t identified in the response by the government.


more...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/over-50-biden-administration-employees-12-us-agencies-involved-in-social-media-censorship-push-documents_4704349.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge

----------------------------------------------------

There is a distribution list on a CDC email attachment calling everyone "partners and collegues". Just because someone at the CDC decided to send out a mass communication does not mean any of those people agreed, or is, a "partner". But still...... the intent of enlisting all of those entities is amazing.

[Mary Wilson]

but then I have to consider the source location of this article

[Emily]

One of their sources is a collection of emails between government entities and Meta.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22273648-meta-and-hhs-messages

Also, Zuckerberg admitted in an interview he was misled by the government on at least one issue and regrets censoring due to that.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/26/zuckerberg-blames-fbi-for-censoring-the-posts-hunter-biden-scoop/

[sharon sanders]

We carry verifiable data from many different sources. I review dozens of sources daily including liberal, conservative, and government sources. I extract data from all types of biased sources every single day - including the government media of China. I search for the truth and this takes me to many varied sources.

[Emily]

711 pages from the First Amendment lawsuit, hundreds are the emails obtained so far.

https://nclalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Joint-Statement-on-Discovery-Disputes-Combined.pdf

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
MONROE DIVISION

STATE OF MISSOURI ex rel. ERIC S.
SCHMITT, Attorney General,
STATE OF LOUISIANA ex rel. JEFFREY
M. LANDRY, Attorney General, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., in his official
capacity as President of the United States, et
al.,
Defendants

Case 3:22-cv-01213-TAD-KDM Document 71 Filed 08/31/22 Page 3 of 67 PageID #: 2340

Under the First Amendment, the federal Government should have no role in policing
private speech or picking winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is what federal
officials are doing, on a massive scale – a scale whose full scope and impact is yet to be determined.
Secretary Mayorkas of DHS commented that the federal Government’s efforts to police
private speech on social media are occurring “across the federal enterprise.” Doc. 45, ¶ 233. It
turns out that this statement is true, on a scale beyond what Plaintiffs could ever have anticipated.
The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling
federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven
federal agencies and components identified so far, who communicate with social-media platforms
about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all
with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private
speech that federal officials disfavor. The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this
Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS,
CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as
well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury
Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of
the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials. More discovery is needed to
uncover the full scope of this “Censorship Enterprise,” and thus allow Plaintiffs the opportunity to
achieve fully effective injunctive relief. Defendants have objected to producing some of the most
relevant and probative information in their possession—i.e., the identities, and nature and content
of communications, of White House officials and officials at other federal agencies who are not
yet Defendants in this case because they were unknown when Plaintiffs served their discovery six
weeks ago. Defendants have objected to producing discovery that would reveal both the height

Case 3:22-cv-01213-TAD-KDM Document 71 Filed 08/31/22 Page 3 of 67 PageID #: 2340

and the breadth of the federal “Censorship Enterprise.” The Court should overrule these objections
and order Defendants to provide this highly relevant, responsive, and probative information...

[Pathfinder]

Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General Ask Court to Compel Department of Justice to Produce Communications Between Top Officials and Social Media Companies

Sep 1, 2022, 09:22 AM by AG Schmitt

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Yesterday, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a Joint Statement on Discovery Disputes, asking the Louisiana District Court to compel the Department of Justice to turn over communications between high-ranking Biden Administration officials from the White House, Department of State, FBI and others and major social media companies. The Department of Justice has already turned over communications between a number of federal officials and social media companies but has refused to provide communications between top-ranking officials and social media companies.

“Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit back in May that seeks to expose how top Biden Administration officials allegedly colluded with social media companies to censor freedom of speech on a number of topics, including COVID-19. We won in court in July, and the Court required the Biden Administration to turn over communications between federal officials and social media companies,” said Attorney General Schmitt. “We have already received a number of documents that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we’re not done. The Department of Justice is cowering behind executive privilege and has refused to turn over communications between the highest-ranking Biden Administration officials and social media companies. That’s why, yesterday, we asked the Court to compel the Department of Justice to produce those records. We’re just getting started – stay tuned.”

The communications already provided by the Department of Justice to the plaintiff states show, as the joint statement points out, a vast “Censorship Enterprise” across a multitude of federal agencies. In response to Missouri and Louisiana’s interrogatories, defendants identified 45 federal officials at DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General (all of which are contained in either DHS or HHS) that communicate with social media platforms about “misinformation” and censorship. The joint statement points out, “But in those responses, Defendants did not provide information about any federal officials at other federal agencies of whom they are aware who engage in such communications with social-media platforms about misinformation and censorship, though Plaintiffs had specifically asked for this highly relevant information. Defendants’ document production, however, reveals that such officials at other federal agencies exist—for example, their emails include extensive copying of officials at the Census Bureau, and they also include communications involving the Departments of Treasury and State.”

Beyond the Department of Justice’s production, “Meta, for example, has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials—including senior officials at the FDA, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House—have communicated with Meta about content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories to Defendants. YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including officials at the Census Bureau and the White House, many of whom were also not disclosed by Defendants.”

The joint statement continues, “The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials. Defendants have objected to producing some of the most relevant and probative information in their possession.”

This “Censorship Enterprise” is proven by the Department of Justice’s productions thus far, but the full extent of federal officials’ collusion with social media companies on censorship is unknown until the Department of Justice produces further communications requested by Missouri and Louisiana.

A senior Facebook official sent an email to the Surgeon General stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email chain follows the SG’s “misinformation health advisory” in July 2021: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/hhs-fb-email-1.pdf?sfvrsn=53bc4454_2

The same senior official sent a later email to HHS and noted, "Thanks again for taking the time to meet earlier today." Then, the official continued to discuss how Facebook is taking even more steps to censor freedom of speech: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/hhs-fb-exhibit.pdf?sfvrsn=55bd83df_2

Twitter scheduled a meeting to debrief top White House officials on “vaccine misinformation.”: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/twitter-vaccine-meeting-wh.pdf?sfvrsn=6599e359_2b

There are several instances where Facebook wouldn’t proceed with censoring freedom of speech on their platform until they had input, or a “debunking” from the CDC. Twitter followed the same course in at least one email.

• Example 1: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/fb-cdc-child-vaccine.pdf?sfvrsn=2f8960de_2
• Example 2: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/fb-cdc-omicron.pdf?sfvrsn=78eb53ec_2
• Twitter example: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/twitter--cdc-action.pdf?sfvrsn=12c0dc46_2

The CDC also proposed a monthly pre-debunking meeting with Facebook to help them censor free speech (https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/cdc-fb-monthly-debunk.pdf?sfvrsn=3508a21f_2) as well as regular “Be on the Lookout” calls with major social media outlets: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/cdc-bolo-meeting.pdf?sfvrsn=9a060658_2

A White House official was even concerned about parody Fauci accounts and coordinated with FB to take them down: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/fake-fauci.pdf?sfvrsn=a9d8f2bf_2

The joint petition can be found here: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/doc-71---joint-statement-on-discovery-disputes.pdf?sfvrsn=3b968800_2

https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2022/09/01/missouri-and-louisiana-attorneys-general-ask-court-to-compel-department-of-justice-to-produce-communications-between-top-officials-and-social-media-companies