by Sharon Rondeau
(Dec. 30, 2022) — On Monday, journalist David Zweig released “Twitter Files” revealing “The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.”
Zweig writes on Substack and for other publications, including The Free Press, where he published a first-person article Monday detailing his findings after combing through the “Twitter Files” to which the new CEO, Elon Musk, provided access.
Zweig and a handful of other journalists associated with The Free Press, which was recently launched by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, reviewed the files which Musk contended must be made public to restore “trust” in the social-media platform.
After Musk acquired the company, he assumed management of Twitter’s day-to-day activity, platform development and moderation decisions, pledging to restore freedom of speech. Thus far, he has reinstated thousands of user accounts, many of which belong to physicians and scientists expressing views on masking, COVID-19 vaccines and lockdowns contrary to that of the Biden regime.
Musk has also described Twitter, as he found it, to be “a crime scene.”
Previous files have shown Twitter was in regular communication with the FBI, CIA, DHS, ODNI and DOJ dating back to at least 2018 and that the FBI, as part of the “Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), made dozens, if not hundreds, of requests for account removals in the weeks preceding the 2020 election.
In its contacts with social-media platforms in the fall of 2020, the FBI suggested that a narrative surrounding Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, would consist of Russian propaganda, prompting Twitter to censor The New York Post‘s accurate exclusive released on October 14, 2020 as well as the paper’s account through the end of that month.
Prior to release of any of the Twitter Files, Musk revealed that in his view, Twitter “interfered in elections.”
Zweig was chosen to illuminate the public about the government’s enlisting of Twitter on the COVID pandemic response, Weiss reported, based on his background of probing “the underlying science, or lack thereof, behind many of our nation’s policies” for the last three years.
Zweig began his “thread” with the government’s manner of controlling information:
– 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*
“The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19,” Zweig wrote.
In his fifth tweet, he reported, “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.”
The Trump administration sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation” driving “panic buying” and other types of decisions, Zweig continued.
Trump administration officials also held meetings with “Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others,” Zweig wrote in #7. His tweet is accompanied by a screenshot from an apparent file or report stating, “Twitter, alongside several other tech companies, including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, participated. Activities included a standing weekly call to share general trends and hosting a shared Microsoft Teams group…”
Subsequently, Zweig reported, the Biden White House targeted “anti-vaxxer accounts,” requesting suspensions of Twitter’s “Public Policy” division, including that of independent journalist Alex Berenson, whose account was “permanently suspended” in late August 2021.
As Berenson has reported, after his suspension, he filed suit against Twitter and was ultimately reinstated as the result of a settlement, after which he claimed the Biden White House had “privately demanded” the closure of his account. Because of the terms of the settlement, Berenson was not able to elaborate beyond a certain point, he indicated to Fox News Digital in August 2022, but said, “I hope and expect to have more information to report soon.”
“In the legal process Twitter was compelled to release certain internal communications, which showed direct White House pressure on the company to take action on Berenson,” Zweig continued.
In #10, Zweig included a screenshot from an April 2021 “Slack” channel (internal Twitter communication system) message, which was among those disclosed during Berenson’s litigation and indicated the Biden White House “had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform” [sic].”
At approximately the same time he spoke with Fox News Digital, Berenson expounded on that and other issues on his Substack, a link to which Zweig provided. “…although I am back on Twitter, the company’s censorship is only worsening, in seeming violation of the California Constitution and possibly the (badly misinterpreted) Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act,” Berenson wrote. “Twitter is banning accounts of all sizes that are doing nothing but raising detailed and fact-based questions about the risks of the mRNA vaccines.”…although I am back on Twitter, the company’s censorship is only worsening, in seeming violation of the California Constitution and possibly the (badly misinterpreted) Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. Twitter is banning accounts of all sizes that are doing nothing but raising detailed and fact-based questions about the risks of the mRNA vaccines.”
Zweig’s remaining entries offer details as to how Twitter throttled certain accounts; labeled others as purveyors of “misleading” information, even when quoting published, peer-reviewed medical studies or data from the CDC; and discussed other accounts at length, at times disagreeing with the Biden White House’s demands for censorship.
“Bots” were often used to flag accounts which contradicted the government’s desired narrative, Zweig reported, although triggering human intervention.
In their reporting, some of the journalists to whom Musk provided access stated that “Twitter had no input” into their reporting but qualified it with, “The searches were carried out by a Twitter attorney, so what I saw could be limited.”
Still waiting for Facebook to be drawn kicking and screaming into the open for their bias, banning and cancelling of accounts. We all now know why our voice was never heard and that our comments were thrown into a dark hole of illegal censorship. As I have left FB I do not know if they have now limited their blatant censoring of facts.