What actually transpired when Twitter treated the coronavirus pandemic? Musk asserts that the world will know.
A Twitter user questioned Musk on Sunday whether there will be an exposé detailing how the social media giant rallied behind the party line during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“Oh it is coming bigtime,” Musk replied.
When will we get the twitter files on covid? The info on the suspension of the many doctors and scientists? Who was involved? Suppression of what has turned out to be factual information.
— Aaron Murray (@murraymints82) December 11, 2022
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
Musk has initiated a project dubbed “Twitter Files” in which journalists hand-selected by Musk have disclosed evidence on Twitter’s behind-the-scenes efforts to stifle discourse on the network, most recently over the banning of former President Donald Trump.
Musk also added a zinger aimed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose prominence as a visionary of electric cars and space travel, as well as being one of the world’s wealthiest men, helped make his Twitter account prominent before he purchased the social media site.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” he added, making fun of both the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the country’s de facto COVID czar, as well as the progressive fad of announcing personal pronouns.
Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene responded to this.
My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
A self-declared “free speech absolutist,” Musk has previously said that he will allow Twitter under his ownership to be a wide-open forum for discussion of COVID-19, in contrast to the heavy hand used to regulate posters who differed from the established line that was a hallmark of Twitter during the pandemic.
Megan McArdle, a journalist for the Washington Post, said on December 3 that Elon Musk’s pledge not to replicate the COVID censoring model is the correct decision.
“I understand the temptation to simply say ‘Shut up and go away’ rather than try to argue people away from beliefs I considered to be poorly evidenced and dangerous. I gave in to that temptation more than once. Unfortunately, I now suspect this did more harm than good — and all the more so when it was official corporate policy rather than criticism from a frazzled columnist,” she wrote.
“For one thing, moderators aren’t good at determining what constitutes actual misinformation. A lot of the dangerous nonsense about covid that circulated on social media came from the same public health experts social media companies were using as arbiters,” she wrote.
She claimed that the collaboration between “public health experts” and social media CEOs fostered skepticism.
.@ElonMusk is close to the mark. Major recent disclosures/admissions that our top public officials (Fauci and Birx) implicated in false statements, fraud, dishonesty, and other corruption tied to covid-19. https://t.co/JO07KLX9yU
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 11, 2022
“For some reason, the experts concluded that the solution to this problem was to get social media moderators, another left-identified group, to forbid conservatives from talking to each other about their suspicions. This, of course, only cemented conservatives’ belief that they were the victims of a vast left-wing conspiracy, making them less willing to believe anything the establishment said. And when they were forbidden to state their beliefs on social media, folks like me could no longer publicly try to argue them out of it,” McArdle wrote.
“I cannot prove that all this cost more lives than moderators saved by preventing people from encountering the suggestion that vaccines will make your kids trans. But in any case, it’s hard to argue that their policy is still saving lives today.”