AFL Lawsuit Uncovers More Damning CDC Documents Revealing Twitter’s “Partner Support Portal” for COVID-19 Related Censorship and the U.S. Government’s Advancement of “Social Inoculation” Against the “Infodemic”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) released the fourth set of shocking documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealing further concrete evidence of collusion between the CDC and social media companies to censor free speech and silence the public square under the government’s label of “misinformation.”
This nearly 600-page release of documents contains new appalling information. Among these include the fact that Twitter ran a “Partner Support Portal” for government employees and other “stakeholders” to submit posts that it would remove or flag as “misinformation” on its platform. Documents obtained by AFL show Twitter enrolling one government employee, through their personal Twitter account, into this Portal. We know from other publicly related documents, that Facebook has copied this approach for election-related censorship.
This production also reveals that the U.S. government was actively working to “socially inoculate”–or brainwashing–the public against anything that threatened its narrative. It did so by using aligned Big Tech corporations to monitor and manipulate users for the purposes of censoring unapproved information and pushing government propaganda. For example, Facebook sent written materials to the CDC in which it bragged about censoring more than sixteen million “pieces of content” containing opinions or information the U.S. government wanted suppressed.
Finally, the documents reveal the CDC was “collaborating with UNICEF, WHO and IFCN member and leading civil society organization Mafindo” to mitigate “disinformation.” Mafindo is a Facebook third-party fact-checking partner based in Indonesia that is funded by Google.
What is clear is that the United States government, Big Tech platforms, and international organizations were fully entangled in an intricate campaign to violate the First Amendment, to silence the American people, and to censor dissenting views.
AFL’s first release of documents revealed the explicit collusion between the CDC and Big Tech to censor what the Biden Administration deemed “misinformation” and push covert COVID-19 propaganda. AFL’s second release built the evidentiary record showing that CDC specifically sent Facebook and Twitter-specific posts to take down, throttle, censor, or flag. AFL’s third release revealed that the CDC’s mask guidance policies for school children were driven by political polling by liberal dark money group The Kaiser Family Foundation rather than science.
Read through as we highlight the most damning findings from this fourth production of government documents:
GOOGLE HOSTS “TRUSTED MEDIA SUMMIT” FEATURING CDC EMPLOYEES:
- In August 2021, the head of Google’s News Lab for the Asia Pacific region (“APAC”), Irene Jay Liu, emailed CDC Vaccine Confidence Strategist Elisabeth Wilhelm to invite her to the APAC “Trusted Media Summit.” (pg. 404)
- CDC’s Vaccine Confidence Strategist then emailed the event planner for Google’s APAC Trusted Media Summit, noting her excitement over being invited to what she referred to as “the coolest misinformation fighting speakeasy.” (pg. 404)
- She was then invited to the summit to give a keynote addressing how the CDC was working with WHO and other international organizations to address a so-called “infodemic” and using “social inoculation” to mitigate it. (pg. 425)
TWITTER’S “PARTNER SUPPORT PORTAL” FOR ONLINE CENSORSHIP:
- On May 10, 2021, Todd O’Boyle at Twitter recommended Carol Crawford at CDC to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which he described as “the best way to get a spreadsheet like this reviewed.” (pg. 183)
- He also indicated that Tweets sent by Carol had either already been “actioned” and if they had not, he would ask the “team to review.”
- On May 11, 2021, the CDC official enrolled her personal Twitter account into Twitter’s Partner Support Portal, which allowed “a special, expedited reporting flow in the Twitter Help Center.” (pg. 182)
FACEBOOK/META FINDINGS:
- Included in this release of documents is a Facebook slide deck that appears to show Facebook acting as an editor and content moderator, boasting its extensive censorship work to the CDC.
- Specifically, Facebook brags, “We remove claims about the existence or severity of COVID-19 … includ[ing] Claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous … than the common flu or cold.” (pg. 46)
- Facebook uses incredibly vague and nebulous standards to judge information (pg. 50).
- In its “Widely Debunked Vaccine Hoaxes” section, Facebook even claims that “natural immunity is safer than vaccine acquired immunity” despite 1) widespread knowledge at the time that the vaccines did not prevent transmission and 2) what we now know: more vaccinated people are dying now than unvaccinated. (pg. 51).
- Finally, Facebook boasts of removing over 16 Million posts on Facebook and Instagram, including over 2 million between February and May 19, 2021. (pg. 53):
Statement from Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Vice-President and General Counsel:
“In recent months, millions of Americans have witnessed the peeling of the ‘misinformation’ onion. Beneath each layer of shocking details about a partnership between the federal government and Big Tech is yet another layer of connections, conspiracy, and collaboration between power centers that seek to suppress information from the American people. We are proud to play a leading role in fighting for the rights of all Americans and revealing this vital information to the American people,” said Gene Hamilton.
Read the full production here.
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