About a year ago, Tucker Carlson wrote an opinion piece on the Fox News website complaining about big tech censorship:
To quote from his piece:
[T]he WHO’s latest finding — that the vaccine is not safe for children — threatens everything that reckless creeps like Zeke Emanuel and the pharmaceutical industry have been working for….
Facebook has just censored a woman called Michelle Coriaty-Herbst for sharing the WHO’s bulletin on vaccines word-for-word. She just posted it. Facebook deleted it. ‘Your comment goes against our community standards on spam,’ Facebook wrote. So, this is Silicon Valley’s new policy: everything about vaccines is good. Period. You are not allowed to suggest otherwise. No matter what data you might have. No matter what data you might have, no matter what a health organization might tell you.
You got that? The WHO cast doubt on vaccines for children but if someone dares to quote them … Facebook was deleting the post.
And if, like Mr. Carlson, you quote the WHO, while complaining about how big tech censored a person just for quoting the WHO, well … that is double plus ungood. For that, Tucker was put on double-secret probation by Twitter, as Paul D. Thacker just revealed:
1. Why did Twitter censor Tucker Carlson? Better yet, who helped Twitter do that? #TuckerTwitterFiles pic.twitter.com/b5WGinZA4V
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
2. While reading an endless sea of #TwitterFiles, one request to censor alleged "Covid misinformation" stood out: Tucker Carlson.
Tucker is now in the news after Fox announced his departure.
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
3. A Twitter employee emailed colleagues in June 2021 to inquire if a Tucker Carlson op-ed for @FoxNewsOpinion should be flagged for COVID-19 "misinformation." pic.twitter.com/2mBIBSA5bJ
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
4. Twitter then punished Tucker Carlson for this op-ed.
Tucker actually cited the World Health Organisation's own website which stated that the WHO was NOT recommending children get the COVID vax. pic.twitter.com/BKnMnyqbPV— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
5. When I looked back at the WHO website, I found they stealth edited their page to remove this passage stating they did not recommend kids get vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/hyf7X0gcRc
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
He understates this. Not only was the WHO website stealth edited, but according to the substack linked at the end of this thread, it was immediately stealth-edited after Mr. Carlson cited them in his piece, which might have contributed to calls to suppress his column. After all, by citing what the WHO had said the day before, they were contradicting what the WHO was saying the day after. From the substack post:
When Tucker’s June 2021 report on the WHO’s vaccine recommendations hit Twitter, the WHO stealth edited their COVID vaccine page to remove language Tucker cited in his op-ed. The following day, Twitter officials began discussing Tucker’s essay and how to limit its impact without calling attention to Tucker and creating ‘political risks’ for Twitter by directly censoring Fox News.
Back to Mr. Thacker’s thread:
6. After Twitter began reviewing Tucker's op-ed for alleged COVID-19 misinformation, an employee emailed that they would take action by "labelling any tweets linking the article." #TwitterFiles pic.twitter.com/SXMkvnqjjq
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
7. Twitter officials also discussed looping in top Twitter execs, such as the general counsel, due to the "political risks" associated with such actions.
Yoel Roth agreed with this approach to "escalate." pic.twitter.com/wIbE32k3xo
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
8. One employee chimed in to explain various options Twitter could take that would affect the op-eds reach, without directly censoring Fox. There were various choices. pic.twitter.com/N1onXc1ylE
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
9. Tucker Carlson would have never known this happened, but when Twitter held a meet and greet months, later, they wrote of Tucker's producer, "[I]t was pretty apparent from the get-go we understood the very different goals we have at work." pic.twitter.com/Uop2l8T66G
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
10. BTW, the Twitter official who first brought Tucker's article to attention came to Twitter from the office of Senator Chuck Schumer, a frequent Tucker critic. pic.twitter.com/A6SEJ8L6j0
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
11. Much thanks to @TexasLindsay_ who helped collect and organise #TwitterFiles. I love San Francisco, but we read and read, until our eyes bled.
More #TwitterFiles to come! pic.twitter.com/KaeGBIDDcu
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
12. Read more on Twitter's censoring of Tucker Carlson at @DisInfoChron: "WHO Censored Itself on Vaccines to Help Twitter Censor Tucker Carlson" https://t.co/YMhhEa2Pba Bird factory secretly clipped Tucker's wings pic.twitter.com/cebTyjfRg9
— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023
To review, a platform (Twitter) with an advertising deal with a vaccine manufacturer, did their best to suppress a story that, if enough people were persuaded by it, would reduce the sales of vaccines. But they also did their best to keep Mr. Carlson from finding out what they were doing, to prevent them from being called out for this corrupt behavior.
In the long arc of history, the people who try to silence critics are almost never the good guys.
Mr. Carlson, for his part, does not seem to be down about his dismissal from Fox News. Here he is laughing at someone in the media for filming him and his wife:
Tucker Carlson spotted in Florida riding around in a golf car laughing his head offpic.twitter.com/pTOkQCMTsD
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 26, 2023
When he gets back ‘on the air’—and he might have a non-compete agreement that prevents him from doing that for a while—we suspect he will say some very interesting things. It might not be that he has been deplatformed, so much as unleashed.
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