Of all the “Twitter files” released so far, I think this report from David Zweig is by far the most important. Zweig, a liberal-leaning Covid-alarm skeptic, distinguished himself during the pandemic for smart, numerate reporting on the real risks of Covid-19 to kids.
He has a comprehensive report on the government’s pressure on Twitter in Bari Weiss’s recently rechristened publication, the Free Press.
The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.
At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House. One area of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.” The trouble is that it wasn’t misinformation: There actually were runs on goods.
And it wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.
When the Biden administration took over, its agenda for the American people can be summed up as: Be very afraid of Covid and do exactly what we say to stay safe.
Read the whole thing.