More than 11,000 people have been kicked off Twitter for sharing Covid 'misinformation'

The damage from heavy censorship under previous Twitter leadership is immeasurable, with thousands silenced for dissenting views on masks, lockdowns, origin of the virus and safety of vaccines

New Twitter owner Elon Musk announced a general amnesty starting next week, under which all suspended accounts will have their suspensions lifted.

This means dozens of big names like Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who had their accounts suspended for sharing what Twitter moderators thought was “misinformation” about Covid-19, will once again be able to use Twitter to communicate with their thousands of followers.

But it turns out it’s more than just a handful of people who were banned.

A report from late July shows that Twitter moderators working under the former management suspended 11,230 people for sharing “potentially harmful” or “misleading information” related to Covid-19.

The people silenced included doctors, researchers and others who shared information that may have appeared critical of the government’s “safe and effective” narrative, even if if the information that was being shared was government data, and even if it was a doctor’s professional opinion about what actions they thought public health officials should take.

Here’s just one example, below:

Twitter’s report, published on its website, shows that from January 2020 until September 2022, 11.72 million accounts were challenged, 11,230 were suspended, and 97,674 posts were removed for sharing what moderators thought was potentially harmful or misleading information related to Covid-19.

The report showed a month-by-month breakdown of how many Twitter accounts were suspended each month over the last two years.

January 2022 was the biggest month for suspensions, with more than 2,200 accounts suspended in that month alone.

Twitter introduced an official Covid-19 Misinformation Policy in 2021.

But the aggressive censorship on the social media platform began in earnest in March of 2020, the same month that President Donald Trump declared a national emergency for the new coronavirus.

In that month, Twitter announced on its blog: “We have broadened our definition of harm to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”

The company said it was enforcing this new policy “in close coordination with trusted partners, including public health authorities and governments” and that it would “continue to use and consult with information from those sources when reviewing content.”

It was a stunning admission that the social media platform, once a free-wheeling exchange of information and ideas among journalists, authors, celebrities, professors, political leaders and ordinary people all over the world, would be preventing such a free and open exchange of information about Covid-19.

Also, it revealed what sounded like illegal infringements on speech by the U.S. government.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution clearly prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech” — making any federal or state government involvement in censoring speech on Twitter a serious constitutional violation.

In the March 27, 2020 blog post, Twitter said it would remove Tweets that include the following:

• Statements which are intended to influence others to violate recommended COVID-19 related guidance from global or local health authorities to decrease someone’s likelihood of exposure to COVID-19, such as: “social distancing is not effective,” or “now that it’s summertime, you don’t need a mask anymore, so don’t wear your mask!”

• Note: We will not require the removal of Tweets that include information about or encouragement to participate in demonstrations or protests.    

• Misleading claims that unharmful but ineffective methods are cures or absolute treatments for COVID-19, such as “Coronavirus is vulnerable to UV radiation - walking outside in bright sunlight will prevent COVID-19.”

• Description of harmful treatments or preventative measures which are known to be ineffective or are being shared out of context to mislead people, such as “drinking bleach and ingesting colloidal silver will cure COVID-19.”

• Denial of established scientific facts about transmission during the incubation period or transmission guidance from global and local health authorities, such as “COVID-19 does not infect children because we haven’t seen any cases of children being sick.”

• False or misleading information that would allow the reader to diagnose themselves as either having or not having COVID-19, such as “If you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, you don’t have coronavirus.”

• Unverified claims that have the potential to incite people to action, could lead to the destruction or damage of critical infrastructure, or could lead to widespread panic/social unrest may be considered a violation of our policies. Examples include,  “The National Guard just announced that no more shipments of food will be arriving for two months — run to the grocery store ASAP and buy everything” or “5G causes coronavirus — #BURN5G.”

• Tweets offering the sale or facilitation of non-prescription treatments/cures for COVID-19, or those which advertise cures or treatments for COVID-19 that require a prescription or physician consultation.

• Specific and unverified claims made by people impersonating a government or health official or organization such as a parody account of official public health advisors claiming that hydroxychloroquine will prevent COVID-19.

• Claims that specific groups or nationalities are never susceptible to COVID-19, such as “people with dark skin are immune to COVID-19 due to melanin production” or are more susceptible, such as “avoid businesses owned by Chinese people as they are more likely to have COVID-19.”

In December of 2021, Twitter formalized this policy and called it the “Covid-19 misleading information policy.”

Here’s the overview:

At the time the blog post was published and this policy adopted, Twitter was still led by its founder, Jack Dorsey, who was the chief executive officer.

Twitter’s top lawyer, who often was the top person signing off on who should be banned, was Indian-born corporate attorney Vijaya Gadde.

Vijaya Gadde, right, with Arianna Huffington. (Getty Images)

In a 2020 article, Politico called Gadde the “lead architect” of the policy that led Twitter to begin to heavily censor people on the right, and said she was the main person handling “disputed Covid-19 facts.”

Yoel Roth

Gadde worked closely with the top content moderator at Twitter, a 32-year-old named Yoel Roth (official title: Head of Trust and Safety).

Roth recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times after departing Twitter, saying he and his team had been responsible for writing the rules. Here’s an excerpt:

“My teams were responsible for drafting Twitter’s rules and figuring out how to apply them consistently to hundreds of millions of tweets per day. In my more than seven years at the company, we exposed government-backed troll farms meddling in elections, introduced tools for contextualizing dangerous misinformation and, yes, banned President Donald Trump from the service. The Cornell professor Tarleton Gillespie called teams like mine the ‘custodians of the internet.’ The work of online sanitation is unrelenting and contentious.”

The day he took over the company in late October, Elon Musk fired Gadde, along with three other top executives, while Yoel Roth was chased out a couple of weeks later by Twitter users, who flooded him with reminders that he’d called all Trump supporters Nazis, telling him he could never be trusted to be a fair moderator of content.

Early last week, Musk reinstated the suspended accounts belonging to President Donald Trump, Kanye West (Ye), Babylon Bee, Project Veritas, Andrew Tate and Juanita Broaddrick.

But nothing was said about reinstating those who’d been silenced because of so-called Covid-19 “misinformation” — until Thanksgiving, when he announced a general amnesty for all suspended accounts, except those that broke the law.

Musk had previously tweeted that a Content Moderation Council would be formed to look at reinstating accounts.

But it would have taken them awhile.

The total number of accounts suspended in just a six-month period, July -December of 2021, was 1.3 million.

As people come back to the platform, and the conversation again begins to crackle, we can maybe glimpse, but not come close to fully grasping, the damage done to the country, and the public debate all over the world, by the silencing of so many for so long.