Twitter Files: The Great COVID-19 Lie Machine

2.“The release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Spring 2020 emails… has been used to exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci.”
“Increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.” pic.twitter.com/VX2NuONdOA

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

4.All were characterized as “potential violations” or disinformation “events” by the Virality Project, a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billons of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

6.We’ve since learned the Virality Project in 2021 worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were “onboarded” to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions of items for review.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

8.This story is important for two reasons. One, as Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smash success. Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

10.THE BEGINNING: On February 5, 2021, just after Joe Biden took office, Stanford wrote to Twitter to discuss the Virality Project. By the 17th, Twitter agreed to join and got its first weekly report on “anti-vax disinformation,” which contained numerous true stories. pic.twitter.com/QbJuQ4mROH

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

12. March 2, 2021: "We are beginning to ramp up our notification process to platforms.” In addition to the top-7 platforms, VP soon gained "visibility" to “alternative platforms such as Gab, Parler, Telegram, and Gettr” – near-total surveillance of the social media landscape. pic.twitter.com/HEVXEtxuug

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

14.VP told Twitter that “true stories that could fuel hesitancy,” including things like “celebrity deaths after vaccine” or the closure of a central NY school due to reports of post-vaccine illness, should be considered "Standard Vaccine Misinformation on Your Platform." pic.twitter.com/nOyuw2r5cH

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

16.VP routinely framed real testimonials about side effects as misinformation, from “true stories” of blood clots from AstraZeneca vaccines to a New York Times story about vaccine recipients who contracted the blood disorder thrombocytopenia. pic.twitter.com/EJ9hxLkMI2

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

18. This echoed a report to Twitter by the Global Engagement Center re “Russia-linked” accounts: “While this account posts legitimate and accurate COVID-19 updates... it posts content that attacks Italian politicians, the EU, and the United States.” https://t.co/AtK6GIfTOs pic.twitter.com/mMtilEOgHz

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

20.The Virality Project helped pioneer the gauging of “disinformation” by audience response. If the post-vaccine death of a black woman named Drene Keyes in Virginia went unnoticed inspired mostly “anti-vaccine” comments on local media, it became a “disinformation” event. pic.twitter.com/R5zNyKkEQ3

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

22."ALMOST ALWAYS REPORTABLE" It encouraged platforms to target people, not posts, using Minority Report-style “pre-crime” logic. Describing “repeat offenders” like Robert Kennedy, Jr., it spoke of a “large volume of content that is almost always reportable.” pic.twitter.com/kHhFEZhN8D

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

24.The VP in April 2021 mistakenly described “breakthrough” infections as “extremely rare events” that should not be inferred to mean “vaccines are ineffective.” pic.twitter.com/tlACZeRkU5

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

26.A few months later: “Breakthrough cases are happening.” pic.twitter.com/zDlk8SrW4q

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

28.After about a year, on April 26, 2022, the VP issued a report calling for a “rumor-control mechanism to address nationally trending narratives,” and a “Misinformation and Disinformation Center of Excellence” to be housed within CISA, at the Department of Homeland Security. pic.twitter.com/YmWQtZmoL3

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

30.Even in its final report, VP claimed it was misinformation to suggest the vaccine does not prevent transmission, or that governments are planning to introduce vaccine passports. Both things turned out to be true.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

32. One of its four core partners, Pentagon-funded Graphika, explained in a report about “Fauxi” that because the public cannot be trusted to make judgements on its own, it must be shielded from truths that might undermine its faith in authority. pic.twitter.com/myoTkIysNW

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

34.For this reason, the CDC-partnered project focused often on disinformation “events” involving Fauci, saying “release of Fauci’s emails foments distrust,” and deriding assertions he “misled the public.” pic.twitter.com/ceQk57PiL9

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

36."OFTEN TRUE CONTENT" The Virality Project communications mirror those produced in the recent court case Louisiana vs Biden, which showed Facebook admitting to the WHO that it, too, was censoring true content. pic.twitter.com/2qqbWZROH7

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

38. In the last #TwitterFiles thread, we posted a video of EIP Director Alex Stamos describing that project as Stanford trying to “fill the gap of things the government couldn’t do” legally. (h/t Foundation for Freedom Online). https://t.co/G7xLxebDWM

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

40. By October 2020, Stamos was hinting at the direction of the future Virality Project, telling a national cybersecurity conference that the “Anti-Disinformation” mission needed a new focus.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

42.VP’s partners: DOD-funded Graphika, the National Science Foundation funded Center for an Informed Public (CIP), the GEC-funded DFRLab, and the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics, or CSMaP. pic.twitter.com/G4QsMQyr3h

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

https://t.co/6whUaYR1ja recap: America’s information mission went from counterterrorism abroad, to stopping “foreign interference” from reaching domestic audiences, to 80% domestic content, much of it true. The “Disinformation Governance Board” is out; but truth-policing is not.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

The crime is not that the vaccines are ineffective and cause injury.  

The crime is that there was an organized campaign to censor the truth, smear truth-tellers, and deceive the people.