Zuckerberg censorship revelation tip of “widespread and chilling” silencing of Covid science

Censorship of top scientists was “widespread and chilling” during the Covid pandemic, Collateral Global research shows.

The news follows revelations that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg bowed to “pressure” from the Biden administration to change or block content on Facebook and Instagram during the pandemic. In a letter sent to a US House committee chair, Mark Zuckerberg said some material was taken down in 2021 under pressure from senior officials.

The White House said it encouraged “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

Last night Oxford University’s Professor Carl Heneghan said he was among many scientists who were censored by big tech during the pandemic. He called for social media companies to be regulated by an independent arbitrator to prevent the suppression of scientific debate.

Prof Heneghan, Director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, was one of many scientists who experienced censorship first hand during the pandemic. In November 2020, Facebook slapped a ‘false information’ warning on link to an article he had written on facemasks with colleague Dr Tom Jefferson. And X – formerly twitter – subsequently suspended his account after putting a ‘fake news’ warning on an article he wrote suggesting Britain’s coronavirus death toll may be lower than thought.

Prof Heneghan, said:

“Censorship becomes an issue when there are particular stresses… covid created a stress that was a bit like a war phenomenon in the social media in the sense that it decided it had to manage the facts and had to support the government. Why? It did this without asking questions and without asking, “every government around the world seems to be responding to Covid differently. Which one’s correct? Which one should we follow or not follow?”

Prof Heneghan said social media should be overseen by an independent organisation similar to the Independent Press Standards Organisation which regulates press complaints:

“I’m not worried about myself, I’m worried about the basic principle that you can manipulate facts and information to suit a particular ideology, particular morals or particular issue that you think are the correct. That is a huge problem.”

Attempts were also made to suppress the views of Collateral Global’s Jay Bhattacharya, a lockdown sceptic and professor of Medicine at Stanford University. In March 2023 twitter released a set of internal emails which revealed Prof Bhattacharya had been censored or ‘shadow banned,’ which meant the tweets were partially hidden and would not make it to the algorithmic trending topics.