So what really happened when Twitter played doctor for the coronavirus pandemic? Elon Musk says the world will know.
Musk was asked by a Twitter user on Sunday if there would be an exposé about how the social media giant rallied ’round the party line during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Oh it is coming bigtime,” Musk replied.
Oh it is coming bigtime …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
Musk has begun a project labeled the “Twitter Files” in which journalists hand-picked by Musk have released information concerning Twitter’s behind-the-scenes activities to muzzle speech on the platform, most recently concerning the ban of former President Donald Trump.
Musk, whose status as a visionary of electric vehicles and space travel, as well as being one of the world’s richest men, helped make his Twitter account popular long before he bought the social media platform, later added a zinger themed at Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Did Twitter help push a false narrative about COVID?
Yes: 99% (1424 Votes)
No: 1% (15 Votes)
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” he wrote, mocking both the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the country’s de factor COVID czar, as well as the progressive craze for declaring personal pronouns.
That drew a response from Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia.
I affirm your pronouns Elon.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 11, 2022
A self-declared “free speech absolutist,” Musk has previously said that he will allow Twitter under his ownership to be a wide-open forum for discussion of COVID-19, in contrast to the heavy hand used to regulate posters who differed from the established line that was a hallmark of Twitter during the pandemic.
In a piece published Dec. 3, Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle wrote that Musk’s vow not to repeat the COVID censorship model is the right call.
“I understand the temptation to simply say ‘Shut up and go away’ rather than try to argue people away from beliefs I considered to be poorly evidenced and dangerous. I gave in to that temptation more than once. Unfortunately, I now suspect this did more harm than good — and all the more so when it was official corporate policy rather than criticism from a frazzled columnist,” she wrote.
“For one thing, moderators aren’t good at determining what constitutes actual misinformation. A lot of the dangerous nonsense about covid that circulated on social media came from the same public health experts social media companies were using as arbiters,” she wrote.
She wrote that the partnership between “public health experts” and social media executives was a breeding ground for suspicions.
.@ElonMusk is close to the mark. Major recent disclosures/admissions that our top public officials (Fauci and Birx) implicated in false statements, fraud, dishonesty, and other corruption tied to covid-19. https://t.co/JO07KLX9yU
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 11, 2022
“For some reason, the experts concluded that the solution to this problem was to get social media moderators, another left-identified group, to forbid conservatives from talking to each other about their suspicions. This, of course, only cemented conservatives’ belief that they were the victims of a vast left-wing conspiracy, making them less willing to believe anything the establishment said. And when they were forbidden to state their beliefs on social media, folks like me could no longer publicly try to argue them out of it,” McArdle wrote.
“I cannot prove that all this cost more lives than moderators saved by preventing people from encountering the suggestion that vaccines will make your kids trans. But in any case, it’s hard to argue that their policy is still saving lives today.”
