Tag: twitter

How Much Did the US Government Pressure Twitter to Ban Alex Berenson?

Nearly a year ago, former New York Times Journalist Alex Berenson was permanently banned from Twitter for writing the following lines about the Covid shot: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”

From the beginning of the Covid hysteria, we followed and cited Berenson many times on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Berenson took government and mainstream media rhetoric about the pandemic the way journalists used to take it: with a heavy dose of skepticism. And not long after he was banned for saying so, even the CDC Director admitted what he wrote is true.

But at the time, he was a danger to the government narrative on Covid, and the “private” social media company Twitter silenced him. They did not only silence one reporter who was a thorn in their side, however. They preemptively silenced anyone else who might might question the narrative. The message was clear to all the would-be Alex Berensons out there: do you want to follow him to the digital gulag?

So not only was Berenson’s free speech under attack—free speech itself was under attack.

Keep reading

Twitter censors story of British mother who died after reaction to Covid vaccine

Three children in the UK were left without a mother after she died from a massive stroke determined to be caused by blood clots that formed after she received the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, but Twitter is labeling conversations about this information taking place on the platform as “misinformation.”

Previously healthy Lucy Taberer, whose youngest is a five-year-old boy, succumbed to the consequences of the Covid shot 22 days after she was vaccinated. At first, the 47-year-old experienced mild side-effects, described in reports as common, to then develop a bruise, skin rash, and pain that the doctors at first dismissed as being caused by kidney stones.

In the end, it turned out that the victim’s reaction to the vaccine had been to develop blood clots that proved to be fatal.

Her death certificate reads that Taberer died of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and vaccine-associated thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.

Local media, including Leicester Mercury, reported about it, and Taberer’s step daughter tweeted a link to the story, but was quickly shut down by Twitter, which labeled the post as “misleading.”

To add insult to injury, she was advised to click another link, provided by Twitter’s “fact-checkers,” that would “explain” why health officials think Covid vaccines are safe “for most people.”

Keep reading

Twitter is locking accounts that share Highland Park shooter’s videos

Twitter is suspending users for sharing and reporting on videos posted by the Highland Park shooter Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III who went on a shooting spree during a July 4th parade on Monday.

Crimo was arrested and accused of killing six people and wounding 38 others.

Twitter users who were reporting on early warning signs from the shooter’s old video content by posting and commenting on old clips began to find their posts deleted and find themselves being locked out of their Twitter account.

Several Twitter users contacted Reclaim The Net, sharing screenshots of their locked accounts. In some cases, no reason was given for the deletion and the space on the email about why the account was locked was blank.

When attempting to look at many of the tweets, Twitter simply states: “This tweet violated the Twitter rules.”

Keep reading

Twitter bans epidemiologist Dr. Andrew Bostom who linked to vaccine-sperm study

Dr. Andrew Bostom, an epidemiologist who had over 47,000 followers and who was a significant dissenting figure during the coronavirus pandemic, has been permanently banned from Twitter after posting a peer-reviewed study on Covid vaccination effects.

According to a screenshot posted by free-market policy analyst and political organizer Phil Kerpen, Dr. Bostom was locked out for linking to an Israeli study titled “COVID-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors.”

Dr. Bostom made several appearances in the media and qualified as an expert witness in epidemiology in a lawsuit filed by parents against an executive order in Rhode Island requiring children to wear masks in schools.

Keep reading

THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF TWEETS: TWITTER IS HIRING AN ALARMING NUMBER OF FBI AGENTS

Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies. Studying a number of employment and recruitment websites, MintPress has ascertained that the social media giant has, in recent years, recruited dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety and content.

Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies,” the “About” section of its website informs readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds.

For example, in 2019, Dawn Burton (the former director of Washington operations for Lockheed Martin) was poached from her job as senior innovation advisor to the director at the FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal, public policy, trust and safety at Twitter. The following year, Karen Walsh went straight from 21 years at the bureau to become director of corporate resilience at the silicon valley giant. Twitter’s deputy general counsel and vice president of legal, Jim Baker, also spent four years at the FBI between 2014 and 2018, where his resumé notes he rose to the role of senior strategic advisor.

Keep reading

Florida Republican Rep victim of Twitter hoax claiming he said children are ‘small sacrifice’ for Second Amendment

When rumors began circulating online that Republican Florida representative Randy Fine tweeted children are a “small sacrifice” for the Second Amendment, a look into the Tweet’s origin revealed it was clearly fake.

The account handle, which used the representative’s name, lacked the “FL” that’s part of representative Fine’s real Twitter username. Additionally, the fake account uses the official’s headshot, but trades his cover photo for an aggressive message about pronouns.

Reuters, an intelligence company and news source, and the Associated Press both evaluated the post and alerted audiences to its inauthenticity.

Early Saturday morning, Fine released a statement from his real account, saying the false post was issued by a convicted felon.

Keep reading

Meet the Conspiracy Theorist Behind Twitter’s ‘Crisis Misinformation Policy’

Twitter’s pick to stop the spread of misinformation in times of crisis has a history of pushing falsehoods.

Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s safety and integrity unit, unveiled the site’s “crisis misinformation policy” on Thursday. In a blog post, Roth outlined how Twitter will place warning labels on tweets deemed to contain misinformation and prevent them from being “amplified or recommended” in times of armed conflict, natural disasters, or public health emergencies.

Roth is a questionable pick to launch the policy, given his own track record with misinformation. Roth oversaw Twitter’s decision to block the sharing of an October 2020 New York Post report on emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. Roth told the Federal Election Commission he made the decision based on “rumors” shared by the United States government’s intelligence community that the Russian government might release materials hacked from Hunter Biden.

There has been no credible evidence that Biden’s laptop was hacked, or that Russia played a role in publishing emails from it. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted that blocking the article was “a total mistake.”

Roth came under fire earlier in 2020 for referring to Trump officials as “actual Nazis” in a 2017 tweet. He also called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) a “bag of farts.”

Keep reading

Twitter To Ramp Up Censorship Of ‘Misinformation’ About The Ukraine War

Twitter has published what it calls a “crisis misinformation policy” announcing that it will be actively reducing the visibility of content found to be false which pertains to “situations of armed conflict, public health emergencies, and large-scale natural disasters.”

If you’ve been paying attention to the dramatic escalations in online censorship we’ve been seeing in 2022, it will not surprise you to learn that the Ukraine war is the first crisis to which this new censorship policy will be applied.

Twitter says that it “won’t amplify or recommend content” found to violate its new policy, and will also attach warning labels to individual tweets and even hide offending content behind a warning label and disable the retweet function on particularly naughty posts.

The problem here is of course the question of how to impartially establish whether something is objectively false without it turning into at best a flawed system guided by fallible human biases and perceptual filters and at worst a powerful institution shutting down unauthorized speech. Twitter says it formed its new policy with input from unnamed “global experts and human rights organizations,” and will be enforcing it with the help of “conflict monitoring groups, humanitarian organizations, open-source investigators, journalists, and more.” This will come as no comfort to anyone who’s familiar with the history of propaganda peddling that can be found in every single one of those respective categories.

Keep reading

‘They’re Going To Get Their Ministry Of Truth One Way Or The Other’: Twitter Announces ‘Crisis Misinformation Policy’

Just one day after the White House confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board had been put on hold — and that board chief Nina Jankowicz had resigned — Twitter announced plans to implement a new “crisis misinformation policy.”

The plan, according to a tweet from @TwitterSafety, would be implemented to ensure that Twitter as a platform did not amplify or contribute to the spread of misinformation.

“People turn to Twitter during crisis times to share news, find support, and stay connected. Today, we’re launching a crisis misinformation policy so Twitter doesn’t recommend or amplify viral, false content that can further harm already vulnerable groups,” the tweet read.

“We’ve been refining our approach to crisis misinformation, drawing on input from global experts and human rights organizations. As part of this new framework, we’ll start adding warning notices on high visibility misleading Tweets related to the war in Ukraine,” the thread continued.

Keep reading

Half of Joe Biden’s Twitter Followers Are Fake, Audit Reveals

Almost half of President Joe Biden‘s current 22.2 million followers on Twitter are fake accounts, according to an audit tool provided by software company SparkToro.

SparkToro’s tool found that 49.3 percent of accounts following the official @POTUS Twitter account are “fake followers” based on analysis of a number of factors, including location issues, default profile images and new users.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is currently trying to buy Twitter, has expressed concerns about the number of fake accounts and a potential crack down could see users such as Biden lose a huge number of followers.

Musk said early on Tuesday that his $44-billion deal to purchase the social media company could not go ahead until issues with fake accounts were resolved and he appeared to criticize Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.

Keep reading