The Censorship Pandemic

Published: May 6, 2021

Online censorship during the pandemic: situation and solutions.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the well-known manipulation and censorship on major US internet platforms Google/YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia has reached unprecedented levels. The platforms generally claim to enforce WHO and local health authority guidelines, not because they are correct – they were mostly wrong – but because they are deemed “authoritative”.

Some notable examples:

1. In the United States, YouTube deleted a video of the official Senate testimony of US doctors on the importance of evidence-based early treatment, opposed by the US FDA, NIH and CDC.
2. In Germany, Google and YouTube silently removed ironic anti-lockdown videos by German TV actors from their search results (a classic Google/YouTube manipulation technique). Prior to that, YouTube had already deleted some of the largest independent German media channels.
3. In Switzerland, in what may have been a world first, Swiss authorities apparently told YouTube to delete five minutes of a live stream – without notifying the streamer – that showed how Swiss police trapped and detained an independent journalist during an anti-repression protest.
4. Facebook deleted a group with 120,000 members reporting and discussing covid vaccine adverse events and notoriously adds “vaccines are safe” notes to posts of people mourning the post-vaccination death of a family member.
5. Wikipedia, whose mostly anonymous editors and administrators have repeatedly been exposed as employees or PR agents of pharmaceutical corporations (or British intelligence operatives), has pushed official misinformation and deleted dissent throughout the pandemic.

The solution to this situation is quite simple, however. Advanced internet users should never use Google search, on any device, unless they want to monitor the current extent of censorship; they should never use the internet without an ad and tracking blocker; and they should always try to use alternatives to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, both as content producers and as consumers.

To read more about this topic, see: Professional Media Use: Seven Recommendations.

Addendum

During the coronavirus pandemic, censorship has affected science itself. For instance, three major journals refused to publish the Danish randomized controlled trial that found no significant effect of face masks against coronavirus infection; another journal refused to publish a meta-analysis on ivermectin-based early treatment that had already been peer-reviewed; and ResearchGate removed a critical review on face masks and deleted the account of its author, a Canadian professor.

See also

• Advanced Online Media Use
• Wikipedia: Disinformation?
• Twitter: Singing in the Rain