Virality Project as Public/Private Partnership to Ban Inconvenient Facts About COVID-19

A powerful attempt to shut down free speech and maintain high COVID vaccine use

This is an article from Trial Site News, on which many of my articles are published after first appearing on this Substack site. A few of my personal thoughts are given in brackets. Few Americans are aware of the Virality Project and its aim to stop people like me from spreading the truth about COVID vaccines and to stop people like you from learning the truth.

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“The Virality Project is a coalition of research entities focused on supporting real-time information exchange between the research community, public health officials, government agencies, civil society organizations and social media platforms. Our objective is to detect, analyze and respond to incidents of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation across online ecosystems and ultimately mitigate the impact of narratives which would otherwise undermine the public’s confidence in the safety of these processes in the United States.”

This Project led by Stanford University describes itself in terms that seem to be a near confession to conspiracy: note that “government agencies” are included in the “real-time information and exchange, then add the fact that many NGO’s and social media firms have financial ties to the US government, and mix in the First Amendment’s prohibition of restrictions on lawful speech. The result? Yet another sign of our rights being infringed by the COVID-19 regime. [This is the prime ugly truth; keep people ignorant and maintaining effectiveness of vaccine propaganda.]

Concerned citizens and conspiracies

In their announcement of the project, Virality notes that “Anti-vaccine disinformation will pose significant challenges to the rollout and public adoption of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. The anti-vaccine movement has well-developed online networks and expertise in leveraging social channels to spread its messages. These networked activism efforts have linked longtime anti-vaccine activists, health and wellness influencers, those who object to vaccination requirements as government overreach and politically-driven communities who have actively amplified COVID and other conspiracies. The movement is experienced, well-funded, and able to generate in-the-streets action. It has already begun to expend significant efforts to enter the mainstream conversation and erode confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.” [Eroding public confidence in the vaccines is absolutely necessary if lives are to be protected and saved.]

Censorship by government entities

Given that this project ended up censoring many facts that turned out to be true, this conflation of anything that does not fit with an official narrative with fringe conspiracists shows us how the slippery slope of censorship can work. The announcement continues, “The Partnership consists of analysts across six of the nation’s leading institutions focused on the analysis of mis- and disinformation in the social media landscape: the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics and Tandon School of Engineering, Graphika, and the National Conference on Citizenship.” The key, the University of Washington is a public university; this is another factor pointing to unlawful government censorship. And VP partner Graphika is Pentagon-funded, according to news reports. [The more you know the more you understand the the public health establishment has been a total failure.]

No worrisome jokes, questions, or complaints allowed

On March 17, both the New York Post and Fox News published pieces about Virality. Per the Post,

“Did you make any ‘worrisome jokes’ about the Biden administration’s proposal to send agents door-to-door to browbeat people to get COVID vaccines? Then you were a public enemy guilty of spreading dangerous disinformation.

Did you ask questions about the COVID policy? You were guilty of a tactic ‘commonly used by spreaders of misinformation to deflect culpability.’

Did you complain to anyone that vaccine passports violated your liberty? You were deluded, if not depraved, and guilty of propelling a deceptive ‘anti-vaccination narrative about the loss of rights and freedoms.’”

[The mainstream media has failed to inform the public about the evil Virality Project.]

VP deputized by Homeland Security to censor millions

Based on the Twitter Files from Matt Taibbi and his latest release of “The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine,” we can see the contacts in which federal contractors encouraged censorship by social media firms of anyone who had doubts about the COVID-19 regimes. Taibbi focuses on the Virality Project (VP), “which federal agencies bankrolled to engage in ‘detecting and mitigating the impact of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines.’” According to Foundation for Freedom Online president Mike Benz, VP was “deputized by [Homeland Security] to censor millions of . . . opinions . . . about COVID.” And according to Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey, federal actors in the Surgeon General’s Office, CDC, and HHS worked together in a “censorship enterprise called the Virality Project, which procures the censorship of enormous quantities of First Amendment-protected speech.” VP actually took the view that given FDA approval, “any reports of side effects were automatically disinformation.” [What a disgrace!]

True posts “could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy”

VP suggested that social-media firms tamp down “stories of true vaccine side effects” along with “true posts which could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy.” Despite being true, claims that available vaccines did not prevent virus transmission were labeled as “misinformation.” In another example, the VP’s weekly briefing from June 2021, stating that publication of Dr. Fauci’s emails regarding gain-of-function research done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology "has been used to exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci and in US public health institutions" and will "foment Increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance."

[Any view or fact the the evil Fauci disagreed with was the truth.]

“Orwellian proof-of-concept”

In his release, Taibbi noted, "This story is important for two reasons. One, as Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smashing success. Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging[.] 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." VP took objection to Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wisc.) attempt to ask questions about vaccine safety, stating that this is a "tactic commonly used by spreaders of misinformation." In 2021, VP stated it was to “hone in” on an "increasingly popular narrative about natural immunity." In an April 2022 report, VP called for a "Misinformation and Disinformation Center of Excellence" at DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in order to "establish a rumor-control mechanism to address nationally trending narratives."

[The fight to keep presenting the truth about vaccines must continue.

LATEST DEVELOPMENT

On March 23, 2023, by a commanding majority including 10 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, it affirmed the preliminary injunction against President Biden’s mandate to force all federal workers to receive the Covid vaccine.  While the Covid vaccine mandate has been lifted in the military, Biden has not repealed it for federal workers and it took this rare sitting of the entire appellate court in New Orleans to block it.  Foreign travelers are still not allowed to visit the United States to see loved ones or participate in events unless they comply with Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate.

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