Twitter allowed America’s biggest pharmaceutical companies to spread misinformation that hurt their competitors, according to a new batch of the Twitter Files released by Lee Fang, a journalist for the Intercept.
In the latest batch of the Twitter Files, Fang explains how Twitter censorship was utilized by pharmaceutical giants as part of their broader strategy to ensure smaller competitors and companies focused on therapeutics could not damage their extremely profitable coronavirus vaccine business.
1. New piece from the TWITTER FILES.
How the pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media to shape content around vaccine policy.The push included direct pressure from Pfizer partner BioNTech to censor activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023
This strategy included fending off efforts to water down strict intellectual property laws inhibiting the sharing of patents for coronavirus vaccines and treatments.
“Global drug giants saw the crisis as an opportunity for unprecedented profit,” wrote Fang. “Behind closed doors, pharma launched a massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents/IP for new covid-related medicine, including therapeutics and vaccines.”
Twitter censorship was part of this strategy. BioNTech, the developer of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, asked the tech platform to censor users asking for generic low-cost vaccines.
5. That brings us to Twitter. The global lobbying blitz includes direct pressure on social media. BioNTech, which developed Pfizer's vaccine, reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines. pic.twitter.com/6cVIRcUDZV
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023
In addition to suppressing content that posed a threat to their dominance over coronavirus treatments, lobbyists for the pharma giants also spread exaggerated claims on Twitter about the costs of watering down intellectual property regulations related to treatment development. Twitter took no action to curtail this activity.
13. Notably, this massive push to censor and label covid misinfo never applied to drug companies. When big pharma wildly exaggerated the risks of creating low-cost generic covid vaccines, Stronger did nothing. The rules applied only to critics of industry. https://t.co/FTzQsGKM9i
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 16, 2023
“Notably, this massive push to censor and label covid misinfo never applied to drug companies. When big pharma wildly exaggerated the risks of creating low-cost generic covid vaccines, Stronger [the pharmaceutical industry’s content moderation project] did nothing. The rules applied only to critics of industry.”
The latest Twitter Files batch about coronavirus censorship comes amid news that Moderna, a leading American producer of COVID-19 vaccines, is planning to charge over $100 for the vaccine.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.