Big Tech executives silent when asked about Biden’s false COVID remarks
Executives from the tech oligarchies Wednesday were silent during a Senate committee hearing when confronted about their double-standard censorship practices. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) pressed former and current executives from Twitter, Meta, YouTube and TikTok if they apply their sweeping censorship tactics to fight COVID-19 misinformation spread by Joe Biden.
Social media companies like Twitter are notorious for their embrace of censorship, which one Twitter executive explained is because “people don’t know how to make a rational decision” without Twitter's assistance. Censorship has been the chief weapon wielded by the tech giants in their war against “misinformation”.
This has resulted in suspending world-class scientists like Dr. Andrew Bostom for sharing a peer-reviewed study critical of the vaccine; a Twitter user for writing an irreverent tweet about Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and the vaccine; and journalist Alex Berenson for posting a factual tweet about the injections. Facebook censored the hashtag #DiedSuddenly because it raised questions about the vaccine’s safety.
This suppression, sometimes done at the behest of the White House, is performed in the name of “combatting misinformation.”
But when asked if they censored Joe Biden’s false statements that “you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations” and that vaccinated people “do not spread the disease to anyone else,” the Big Tech executives did not respond.
Sen. Johnson displayed statistics showing high COVID-19 deaths among “vaccinated” people in England.
“So obviously, this [information] was published and they were publishing other similar information during that time period when President Biden lied to the American public that this was a pandemic of the unvaxxed. And if you got vaccinated, you're not going to go to the hospital, you're not going to be in an ICU unit and you're not going to die. Well, 63.5% of the people fully vaccinated were dying in England at the exact same time. Why didn't you pull this? Have you ever labeled the President of the United States comment as ‘misinformation?’ Have you ever done that? Any of you?”
Sen. Johnson was met with a cacophony of silence.
“I'll take that as a no,” he said, before launching into a scathing rebuke of the companies.
“Again, I just wonder, who are the authorities? Who do you think you are to censor information from eminently qualified doctors who had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients when the NIH guideline was basically, if you test positive for COVID, go home. Be afraid. Isolate yourself. Don't do anything until you're so sick, we'll send you to the hospital. We'll give you Remdesivir, where we have 1,600 deaths so far. We’ll put you on a ventilator and we’ll watch you die. You guys bear a fair amount of responsibility for hundreds of thousands of people not being treated, and I would say probably dying that didn't have to die. I hope you're proud of yourselves.”
The executives, including former Twitter Head of Engineering Alex Roetter, former Facebook VP Brian Boland and Lincoln Network Senior Fellow Geoffrey Cain, also admitted that the social media companies, who censored the damning exposé of the Biden family before the 2020 election, have a significant impact on elections.
“Twitter was actually very effective, when they blocked the New York Post articles on the Hunter Biden laptop,” said Sen. Johnson. “We had Jack Dorsey in front of the Commerce Committee back in, I think, October 2020. And both Senator Cruz and myself asked him, because we were talking about, you know, Russians using the platforms to impact our elections, and everybody agrees that could happen. We asked Mr. Dorsey, do you believe Twitter could impact the election? Mr. Dorsey said, ‘No.’ Mr. Roetter, do you believe Twitter has the capability of impacting the election?”
“I think all these social platforms are they're so massive, it's hard to believe that they're not impacting,” said Roetter.
“Mr. Boland, do you believe that as well?”
“These platforms absolutely have influence and I believe-- ” began Boland before Sen. Johnson cut him off.
“Mr. Cain?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. So there is a problem right there,” answered Sen. Johnson. “Okay. And I appreciate you acknowledging that fact.”
