Latest ‘Twitter File’ Reveals Censorship of COVID-19 Info Inconvenient to US Gov’t
The Twitter logo is seen on the awning of the building that houses the Twitter office in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. Elon Musk posted a video Wednesday showing him strolling into Twitter headquarters ahead of a Friday deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Twitter censored information about COVID-19 that was inconvenient to the US government and elevated the positions of public health authorities regardless of veracity, author David Zweig revealed in the latest release of the so-called Twitter Files. “The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about COVID-19,” Zweig said on Monday. “Whether by humans or algorithms, content that was contrarian but true was still subject to getting flagged or suppressed.” Internal Twitter information revealed that the administrations of former US President Donald Trump and current officeholder Joe Biden both directly pressed the social media platform to moderate pandemic-related content according to their views, Zweig said. In some instances, Twitter suppressed users sharing the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own data, Zweig added. Twitter, based on the political leanings of senior staff and government pressure, deemed the guidance of US health authorities as definitive, Zweig said. Information that challenged the opinion of the government, including on the potential harms of vaccines or relative risk of the virus, were subject to suppression, Zweig said. Zweig also noted the impact the suppression of open debate may have had on public response to the pandemic and its aftermath. However, Twitter did not fully capitulate to the US government’s requests, Zweig said. Twitter employees often debated moderation cases in great detail and with more care than the government toward free speech, Zweig said. Nevertheless, Twitter’s moderation process had three major problems, according to Zweig: much of the company’s content moderation was conducted by bots; non-expert contractors in foreign countries were tasked with assisting in moderation; and higher level employees introduced bias in how both the bots and contractors operated. 
AmericasTwitter Files: Staffers Had to ‘Triage’ Multiple FBI Requests on Tackling ‘Misinformation’ Accounts25 December, 08:35 GMTThe bias bent “heavily toward establishment dogma,” Zweig said. Zweig provided a number of examples of Twitter taking action against accounts for tweeting demonstrably true information. Previous installments of the Twitter Files, which are based on internal information and released in coordination with company chief Elon Musk, have detailed other instances of the platform’s engagement with the US government and military. The files revealed coordination to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story and boost military psychological operations accounts.
