California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu deleted a tweet after he was called out by Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Monday for posting false information regarding the latest release of “The Twitter Files.”
The latest round of the Twitter Files dropped earlier in the day and revealed that the Biden administration pressured the social media company to censor and suppress information on Covid, Covid vaccines, and the public reactions to the pandemic, which went against their preferred messaging.
In a now-deleted tweet Lieu tagged journalist David Zweig who posted the latest chapter and said, “The tweet you cite is in fact misleading. People of all ages at high risk from COVID generally benefit from vaccines. Prior natural immunity may last only a few months. COVID appears to be a leading cause of death for children.”
Musk replied to a comment in the thread challenging Lieu, “Ted is linking to misleading data,” and tagged “Community Notes.”
@tedlieu The preprint you linked to has actually been re-written as a result of my critique because it is seriously flawed and inaccurate. You linked to the old version. https://t.co/wu6NBfzaL6
— Kelley K (@KelleyKga) December 26, 2022
Following Musk’s comments, Lieu’s tweet was deleted.
The latest release of the Twitter Files posted by Zweig illustrated how the federal government allegedly “rigged” the “COVID debate” by “censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy,” and “discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed,” as well as “ordinary users.”
1. THREAD:
THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
Officials in both the Trump and Biden administrations pressured the tech company to suppress certain COVID details in favor of their preferred narrative.
Zweig tweeted, “Internal files at Twitter that I viewed while on assignment for @thefp showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes.”
3. What we have yet to cover is Covid. This reporting, for The Free Press, @thefp, is one piece of that important story.
— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022
Zweig added, “At the onset of the pandemic, according to meeting notes, the Trump admin was especially concerned about panic buying. They came looking for “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” about “runs on grocery stores.” But . . . there were runs on grocery stores.”
The journalist noted, “It wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.”
“When the Biden admin took over, one of their first meeting requests with Twitter executives was on Covid. The focus was on ‘anti-vaxxer accounts.’ Especially Alex Berenson,” Zweig wrote.
According to Zweig, “one of the first meeting requests from the Biden White House” that “COVID misinformation” be suppressed, specifically targeting Berenson, an early critic of the mRNA vaccines. Berenson was kicked off the platform for his questions and later sued Twitter.
AI and machine learning tools such as “bots” were employed to do much of the work of “content moderation,” according to Zweig, along with outsourced contractors in the Phillipines. These employees “were given decision trees to aid in the process, but tasking non experts to adjudicate tweets on complex topics like myocarditis and mask efficacy data was destined for a significant error rate.”
Story cited here.