The slow release of the twitter files that show how the federal government and others (often NGO's claiming to be independent but who receive government funding) were censoring twitter (and probably other social media sites) is a "duh" moment for most of us who wondered about this.
Lots of this is about US politics, but some is about censorship of the anti vax nuts, who hated vaccines long before the questions of the mRNA vaccine came up.
Indeed, the fact that these crazies started the questioning was one reason pushed not to believe this stuff, at least until Joe Rogan blew up the narrative and some countries banned certain vaccines.
I got the AZ (british) vaccine, an adenovirus based shot, mainly because originally the DOH here in the Philippines refused to sign a liability waiver paper that would forbid anyone getting side effects from the vaccine to sue Pfizer. (so instead of having it available in January, it didn't arrive until October or so, and by then I guess the DOH figured it was safe since few reports of problems were resported). So we got all sorts of different vaccines from all sorts of countries, but here I got the AZ and our employees, who were lower risk, got the Chinese vaccine, which didn't help much but was better than nothing.
Right now, except for testing everyone before admission to the hospital, and wearing a mask in the bank, the Covid story is pretty well ignored: Latest statistics:
162 new cases and 12 new deaths in the Philippines
When I got the AZ vaccine, I was aware of the risk of blood clots (that made a lot of countries not give it to the young) but since I am high risk, I figured the cost benefit ratio was okay for my age and comorbidity cohort.
But when it came to the mRNA vaccines, instead of admitting the problem and letting people chose, the story was censored even when experts, not paranoid crazies, tried to raise the question if we should be giving so many shots to low risk types.
Here is one tweet on the thread:
WTF? Censor "true posts which could fuel hesitancy".
If things weren't so polarized, maybe one could have a discussion of such things.
Fat old ladies with asthma, yes get the shot. Thin male athletes who probably are immunie thanks to the omicron version probably not. And babies? Why?
Censorship is not just bad, but illegal in the USA.
And the hysteria about Trumpieboy and the protest complaining that voter fraud was not investigated was the story for the last two years, but now that Elon Musk is having known liberal reporters investigate Twitter's censorship problem, I suspect more folks will prefer the propaganda of Fox news over the propaganda of the elites who want to guide you in thinking.
One person, reading how the CIA and others manipulated stories to get the correct folks elected in effect quipped: Well, why not? The CIA manipulates elections all over the world, so why not in the USA?
Yes, and one reason that there is so much distrust of the Ukraine narrative is not just the Russian bots, but because the CIA funded the media years ago to overthow a pro Russia president there, and a lot of the money to do this was via Omidyar money.
and just because the Omidyar group funded Ressa and Rappler to oppose Duterte, it's no reason to believe that this was the CIA trying to manipulate the Philippine elections in the same way they did in the Ukraine.
It didn't work because Duterte had grass roots support because cleaned up Davao.
The anti Duterte English language website Rappler was essentially started with money from the Omidyar group, the same ones behing the press manipulation in the Ukraine years ago...
But they overlooked one thing: the funding was illegal.
Filipinos love Yanks but not when they are pushed around by outsiders, so Ressa had to pretend it was a gift, and then the gov't said ah and did you pay taxes on it? And this was spun by the western press as if she was a heroine.
But anyway, on the long twitter thread, they discuss various government funded NGOs, and a disinformation specialist named Renee DiResta
Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi · 13h 33. This is the Censorship-Industrial Complex at its essence: a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives. It’s the opposite of what a free press does. Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi · 13h 34. Profiles portray DiResta as a warrior against Russian bots and misinformation, but reporters never inquire about work with DARPA, GEC, and other agencies.
In the video below from @MikeBenzCyber , Stamos introduces her as having "worked for the CIA": ...she has become the public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a name promoted everywhere as an unquestioned authority on truth, fact, and Internet hygiene, even though her former firm, New Knowledge, has been embroiled in two major disinformation scandals.
and then up pops this photo: Okay folks nothing to see here. Just move along.
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