New Leaks Reveal Big Pharma Lobbied Big Tech Companies To Push State-run Covid-19 Narratives
Today's Twitter Files drop contains several notable pieces of evidence: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1615008625575202818?s=20
First, that lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry launched a 'massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents/IP for new covid-related medicine," according to The Intercept's Lee Fang. As part of this effort, lobbying group BIO "wrote to the newly elected Biden admin, demanding the U.S. gov sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost covid medicine or vaccines."
Of note, Pfizer and BioNTech raked in $37 billion in revenue in 2021 alone from the COVID-19 vaccine, while Moderna made $17.7 billion the same year (and has recently announced a plan to hike the price of the Covid-19 vaccine by approximately 400%).
BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer vaccine, "reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines."
According to Fang, "Twitter's reps responded quickly to the pharma request," while "A lobbyist in Europe asked the content moderation team to monitor the accounts of Pfizer, AstraZeneca & of activist hashtags like #peoplesvaccine."
Meanwhile, the "fake accounts" flagged by the pharmaceutical companies for action were real people - one of whom Fang spoke with on the phone.
"It's not clear what actions Twitter ultimately took on this particular request. Several Twitter employees noted in subsequent messages that none of this activism constituted abuse. But the company continued monitoring tweets."
"For more than two years, a global movement has been speaking out against pharmaceutical greed and demanding that everyone, everywhere has the tools to combat pandemics," said Maaza Seyoum, a campaigner for the People’s Vaccine Alliance. "Whatever nasty tricks companies and governments pull," she continued, "we cannot and will not be silenced."
Second, 'Pfizer & Moderna's lobbying group, BIO, fully funded a special content moderation campaign designed by a contractor called Public Good Projects (PGP), which worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid "misinformation."' according to Fang.
BIO funded the PGP campaign, "Stronger," to the tune of $1.275 million. Its focus? Helping Twitter 'create content moderation bots,' selecting which public health accounts would be verified, and helping to crowdsource content takedowns.
Of note, the Moderna/Pfizer-funded campaign included regular emails to Twitter officals with takedown and verification requests.
"Here's an example of those types of emails that went straight to Twitter's lobbyists and content moderators. Many focused on @zerohedge, which was suspended."
"To try and stifle digital dissent during a pandemic, when tweets and emails are some of the only forms of protest available to those locked in their homes, is deeply sinister," said Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now.
https://archive.ph/5uFCt
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/big-pharma-bullied-twitter-censor-cheap-vaccine-demands-zerohedge-articles