TWITTER FILES: How Stanford Censors Forced DC Narrative Orthodoxy On Social Media
![](https://clashdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/TwitterFiles-COVID-Virality-Project.jpg)
This has been a particularly rough week for Stanford. You almost feel bad for them — almost.
First, we had the DEI lady dropping a struggle session on a Fifth-Circuit judge who had been an invited guest speaker of the Federalist Society… we later learned the ‘victim’ whose cause they had been rallying behind in their rebuke of said judge was a twice-convicted kiddie porn purveyor. Oops.
Then we found out that a Stanford employee was arrested for felony perjury over falsifying two rape accusations.
Now, we see them playing a central role in the latest Twitter Files drop, working in tandem with the government to create a multi-platform Covid Disinformation monitoring and reporting mechanism.
Any information and communication they deemed ‘problematic’ was forwarded to Twitter for the safety team to work their magic and make it go away.
The coordination between all steps in the system — goverment, ‘independent fact-checkers’, and Twitter safety rules enforcement — flies in the face of everything we were told about this being an honest and impartial system. The steps were separated for reasons of plausible deniability and it was rigged from the beginning.
Most of us have never heard of Stanford’s Virality project before now…
That’s about to change. Stanford reached out to Twitter with this program just days after Biden took office.
Here’s a quick overview of what to watch for before you dive into the twitter files drop itself. Several of them really stood out.
One of them stood out so much that it led to the first all-caps sentence this writer has put into an article since I first began this gig back in 2012. You’ll know it when you see it.
As tweets 6 & 7 state, they set up a massive dragnet to monitor accounts, knowingly silencing true statements while often pushing falsehoods themselves. Tweets 8 & 9 give an even more damning description of what was at the heart of this effort.
Fifteen: concerns about rights and freedoms being lost due to vaccine requirements? That is also ‘misinformation’… despite a certain tennis champion being denied entry to compete in a championship still today over this very issue.
The truth is not a defense will be a recurring theme in these censorship stories. Within weeks of Yoel Roth and others being onboarded (see #11), language in Twitter is already conforming to the censorious standards being pushed by Stanford — over and above the actual pre-existing internal culture and TOS of Twitter itself (#17).
Are you afraid of ‘mandatory vaccinations’? That’s a violation! (#17)
You’re not allowed asking questions (that’s a misinformation stragety) or planning a rally (not a ‘freedom rally’ anyway). It identified well-known repeat offenders like sitting senator Kennedy… (#22) as almost always ‘reportable’.
Be sure to read their incredible self-own in the ‘surveillance state’ irony (#27) and called for the creation of a Rumor-Control mechanism directly connected with Homeland Security (#28)
NOTE: that was ONE DAY BEFORE MAYORKAS ANNOUNCED THE ‘MINISTRY OF TRUTH’ ROLE FOR SCARY POPPINS. (#29)
Why does the public need disinformation censors? Because they are the smart ones and the rest of us are beknighted idiots. (#31-33)
The final tweets talk about their relentless defense of Fauci, their government partners and benefactors, and the close relationship between this initiative and the Russia hoax misinfo people.
Where he linked video, we have included the videos he linked to.
(There is a lot embedded here. Be patient with the loading time.)
1.TWITTER FILES #19
The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine
Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of “True Stories” pic.twitter.com/v41dyC26ZR— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
3.“Reports of vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway”; “natural immunity”; suggesting Covid-19 “leaked from a lab”; even “worrisome jokes”: pic.twitter.com/CM5THKGYRu
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
5.Just before @ShellenbergerMD and I testified in the House last week, Virality Project emails were found in the #TwitterFiles describing “stories of true vaccine side effects” as actionable content. pic.twitter.com/dKxTnxDc3a
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
7.Though the Virality Project reviewed content on a mass scale for Twitter, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Medium, TikTok, and Pinterest, it knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself. pic.twitter.com/Xakyj2PMye
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
9.Two, it accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
11. February 22, 2021: Stanford welcomed Twitter veterans like Yoel Roth and Brian Clarke, instructing them on how to join the group JIRA system. You can watch the friendly welcome video here: https://t.co/E2KfN87GlI
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
13.Through July of 2020, Twitter’s internal guidance on Covid-19 required a story be “demonstrably false” or contain an “assertion of fact” to be actioned. But the Virality Project, in partnership with the CDC, pushed different standards. pic.twitter.com/K23SpK9SgJ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
15. In one email to Twitter, VP addressed what it called the “vaccine passport narrative,” saying “concerns” over such programs “have driven a larger anti-vaccination narrative about the loss of rights and freedoms.”
This was framed as a "misinformation" event. pic.twitter.com/ZdbKE1tFac— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
https://t.co/LnGrUXgDN9 March of 2021, Twitter personnel were aping VP language, describing "campaigns against vaccine passports," "fear of mandatory immunizations," and "misuse of official reporting tools" as "potential violations." pic.twitter.com/AeUdbGIoBa
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
19.That same GEC report found in the #TwitterFiles identified former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and former Italian Democratic Party Secretary Nicola Zingaretti (who’s been compared to Bernie Sanders) as “highly connective” accounts in a “Russia-linked” network. pic.twitter.com/be1RvAVFrk
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
21.VP warned against people “just asking questions,” implying it was a tactic “commonly used by spreaders of misinformation." It also described a "Worldwide Rally for Freedom planned over Telegram" as a disinformation event. pic.twitter.com/VgOJpTN2Ey
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
23.VP was repeatedly, extravagantly wrong. In one email to Twitter on “misinformation,” it spoke of wanting to “hone in” on an “increasingly popular narrative about natural immunity.” pic.twitter.com/KQGM42CAcl
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
25.Later, when “the CDC changed its methodology for counting Covid-19 cases among vaccinated people,” only counting those resulting in hospitalization or death, VP complained that “anti-vaccine” accounts RFK Jr. and “WhatsHerFace” retweeted the story to suggest “hypocrisy.” pic.twitter.com/7Y3NnkkP2d
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
https://t.co/ZJFh45HlyD a chilling irony, the VP ran searches for the term “surveillance state.” As an unaccountable state-partnered bureaucracy secretly searched it out, the idea that “vaccines are part of a surveillance state” won its own thoughtcrime bucket: “conspiracy.” pic.twitter.com/KTJpzIBspx
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
29. The next day, April 27, 2022, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced in a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that a “Disinformation Governance Board” had been created, to be headed by the singing censor, Nina Jankowitz. https://t.co/OwWF7PW1Ct
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
Here is the video:
31.The Virality Project was specifically not based on “assertions of fact,” but public submission to authority, acceptance of narrative, and pronouncements by figures like Anthony Fauci. The project's central/animating concept was, "You can't handle the truth."
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
33. “This continual process of seeding doubt and uncertainty in authoritative voices,” Graphika wrote, in a report sent to Twitter, “leads to a society that finds it too challenging to identify what’s true or false.” pic.twitter.com/gb826OHEEH
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
35.A Cleveland Clinic study showed previous infection offered the “same immunity” as the vaccine, but VP said discovery was susbservient to narrative: “Whether or not… scientific consensus is changing, ‘natural immunity’ is a key narrative… among anti-vaccine activists.” pic.twitter.com/wmdiynJG4y
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
37.From the start, Stanford explained the Virality Project would essentially continue the work of its 2020 Election Integrity Partnership. “The same JIRA system from the EIP is up and running,” they wrote. pic.twitter.com/kTgFYKGQuI
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
39.We also showed video in which Stamos introduced EIP Research Director Renee DiResta as having “worked for the CIA.” DiResta in 2021-2022 would be listed as a “Stanford scholar,” “leading” the Virality Project. https://t.co/gJWFyVXzwu pic.twitter.com/7jh15ZPmBZ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
Here is the video:
41.“We talk way too much about foreign…it's sexy, and it's fun, and it's a little bit cold warry,” Stamos said, adding the “vast majority” of problems were now domestic. “We have like an 80-20 breakdown… I think that needs to be flipped.” https://t.co/QBXplySWtx
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
Here is the video:
43.VP would later say it partnered with “several government agencies,” including the Office of the Surgeon General and the CDC. It reportedly also worked with DHS’s CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and GEC, among others. pic.twitter.com/WUlrkFk7JX
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
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