TWITTER FILES: Big Pharma Pressured Platform to Censor Vaccine Content

The latest Twitter Files showed Big Pharma  “directly” pressured Twitter to help censor users offering any alternative treatments to COVID-19 besides Big Pharma’s vaccines.

The Intercept journalist Lee Fang released the newest Twitter Files Jan. 16 on how “the pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media to shape content around vaccine policy.” Pfizer’sCOVID-19 vaccine-making partner BioNTechexerted “direct pressure” on Twitter to censor “activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries,” according to Fang. And Twitter reportedly complied.

Not only did BioNTech pressure Twitter, but another expensive push from Pfizer and Moderna’s lobbyist BIO funded a specific COVID-19 “misinformation” content moderation policy. The lobbying campaign sent numerous emails of flagged content to Twitter to censor.

While accounts criticizing Pfizer were monitored as potential “fake accounts,” they were “real people,” Fang reported. Ultimately, while Twitter monitored the activism, it is unclear what actions were taken to fulfill the request.  An MRC Free Speech America study in February 2022 found over 800 cases of Big Tech censoring the COVID-19 debate.

But BIO had another lobbying push for its clients Moderna and Pfizer. 

Contractor Public Good Projects worked with Twitter on a “special content moderation campaign” for COVID-19 “misinformation.”