The Biden administration is pressuring tech giants to punish any COVID-19 dissidents guilty of spreading what they label as “misinformation” with excess censorship and surveillance.
In a new report titled “Confronting Health Misinformation,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy urges big tech giants to crack down on what he labels “misinformation ‘super-spreaders'” operating on their respective sites.
“Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort,” Murthy wrote in the introduction of the report.
In new report on COVID misinformation, the @Surgeon_General recommends big tech “impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies.” https://t.co/V6h0GP4BcR pic.twitter.com/KItofTn0LO
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) July 15, 2021
Murthy urged platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and other corrupt social media companies to enact sweeping censorship “consequences” on “repeat offenders” who violate quickly concocted and ever-shifting content policies. He also suggested an algorithm “redesign” meant to “avoid amplifying misinformation, build in ‘frictions’ — such as suggestions and warnings — to reduce the sharing of misinformation, and make it easier for users to report misinformation.”
Oversight and regulation, Murthy continued, should be a priority held and executed by big tech oligarchs who are already overly enthusiastic about labeling, removing, and downranking users and accounts who have different opinions.
“Platforms should increase staffing of multilingual content moderation teams and improve the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms in languages other than English since non-English-language misinformation continues to proliferate. Platforms should also address misinformation in live streams, which are more difficult to moderate due to their temporary nature and use of audio and video,” the guidance from Murthy suggests.
Murthy devoted just three sentences to possibly considering that blind, unexplained censorship could further hurt the public’s trust in “health officials” and their tech company mouthpieces.
“Publish standardized measures of how often users are exposed to misinformation and through what channels, what kinds of misinformation are most prevalent, and what share of misinformation is addressed in a timely manner. Communicate why certain content is flagged, removed, downranked, or left alone. Work to understand potential unintended consequences of content moderation, such as migration of users to less-moderated platforms,” Murthy stated.
For at least a year, big tech overlords such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have all used their power to crack down on Americans in the name of curbing “misinformation” about everything from COVID-19 to election fraud, issuing fake news fact checks about content they don’t like. Some platforms may have been forced to slightly ease up on content restrictions after they had to awkwardly backtrack their overeager campaign against the Wuhan lab leak theory, but they’ve doubled down on censoring and subverting claims about the COVID-19 vaccine and side effects it has caused.
