The Twitter Files Part XV Unrolled
How the pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media to shape content around vaccine policy.
You can find all the Twitter Files unrolled here.
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
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.
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
2. In 2020, it was clear that the pandemic would require rapid innovation. Early on, there was a push to make the solution equitable: an international partnership to share ideas, technology, new forms of medicine to rapidly solve this crisis.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F299d23f0-89b0-4d08-bdae-396ce105e528_2560x1707.jpeg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
3. But global drug giants saw the crisis as an opportunity for unprecedented profit. 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 avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
4. BIO, the lobby group that represents biopharma, including Moderna & Pfizer, wrote to the newly elected Biden admin, demanding the U.S. gov sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost covid medicine or vaccines.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdf3f2909-f9ef-4ff2-ab50-b28fe402fb42_1200x800.jpeg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
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.
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmmuMZuagAE0m-q.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
6. Twitter's reps responded quickly to the pharma request, which was also backed by the German government. A lobbyist in Europe asked the content moderation team to monitor the accounts of Pfizer, AstraZeneca & of activist hashtags like #peoplesvaccine
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmmvEUPaMAExoQ5.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
7. The potential "fake accounts" that Twitter monitored for protesting Pfizer? These were real people. Here's one the Twitter team flagged for potential terms of use violations. I talked to Terry, a 74 year old retired bricklayer in the UK on the phone. https://t.co/qIH0Tngsm1
![Twitter avatar for @TerryB28937065](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/TerryB28937065.jpg)
Terry Brough #PeaceJusticeSocialism ✊ @TerryB28937065
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
8. It's not clear what actions Twitter ultimately took on this particular request. Several Twitter employees noted in subsequent messages that none of this activism constituted abuse. But the company continued monitoring tweets.
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
9. In a separate push, Pfizer & Moderna's lobbying group, BIO, fully funded a special content moderation campaign designed by a contractor called Public Good Projects, which worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid "misinformation."
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
10. BIO provided $1,275,000 to the campaign, part of which is revealed through tax forms. The PGP campaign, called "Stronger," helped Twitter create content moderation bots, select which public health accounts got verification, helped crowdsource content takedowns.
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmmzE-tagAAa0VE.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmmziLyaYAAkjGq.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
11. Many of the tweets the BIO-funded campaign focused on were truly unhinged misinfo, like claims that vaccines include microchips. But others Stronger lobbied Twitter on were more of a grey area, like vaccine passports & vaccine mandates, policies that coerce vaccination.
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmm0dVmaYAIOIlg.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmm0eykaEAAn5RE.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
12. The Moderna/Pfizer-funded campaign included direct regular emails with lists of tweets to takedown & others to verify. Here's an example of those types of emails that went straight to Twitter's lobbyists and content moderators. Many focused on @zerohedge, which was suspended.
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFmm1n2LaAAA52r2.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @lhfang](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/lhfang.jpg)
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.
![Twitter avatar for @PhRMA](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/PhRMA.jpg)
PhRMA @PhRMA
That "How to report accounts" snitch page is particularly chilling. Straight out of Communist East Germany...or modern China.
Literally everywhere, with every story.