Showing posts with label suppression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suppression. Show all posts

Friday, 6 June 2025

Techniques for suppressing health experts' social media accounts (7 - 12, part 2) - The Science™ versus key opinion leaders challenging the COVID-19 narrative

Written for researchers and others interested in the many techniques used to suppress COVID-19 dissidents' social media accounts, and digital voices.


This is the second post alerting readers to the myriad of techniques that social media companies continue to use against key opinion leaders that question the dominant consensus from The Science™. While examples are provided for techniques versus prominent critics of the official COVID-19 narrative, these are also readily applied for stifling the emergence of other issue arenas. These range from the United States of America's support for forever wars via a ghost budget (Bilmes, 2018), to man-made climate change, and from low carbohydrate diets to transgender "gender affirming" medical surgery ideology. These dogmatic prescriptions by the global policy decision makers of the Global Private Partnership (G3P or GPPP) are presented as a "scientific consensus", but are unscientific when protected from being questioned- especially by legitimate experts with dissenting arguments. 

In COVID-19's case, its proponents may claim that lockdowns, masking, distancing and genetic vaccines were based on science. In reality though, these measures were policy directives decided well in advance inside the G3P (Iain Davis, 2021). At the same time, its macro-level stakeholders have been busy for decades developing a 'consensus architecture' that precludes radically different interpretations from its preferred scientific dogmas. For example, "man made climate change" has become anchored as an issue, both scientifically and politically, through a decades-long program of sponsorship from the Rockefeller family, one of the world's leading private research funders (Nordangård, 2024). This has shaped the climate science field, where scientists selectively present data to align with policy goals that promote a fear-led narrative of urgent action (Pielke, 2010). The climate science community, particularly the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), relies on panic and "pro-social" censorship versus irrefutable evidence for advancing the anthropogenic model, sidelining dissenting perspectives and stifling critical debate as inherently unworthy. In pro-social censorship, work is 'rejected, and individuals cancelled, not because the work is substandard or flawed, but because it threatens to undermine a cherished ideology or someone else’s concept of societal safety and harmony. Such censorship is never portrayed as such, of course; the reason given is always that the individual(s) concerned were peddling substandard work leading to harmful misinformation.' (Ridgway, 2025).

Professor Brian Martin's framework for information control (2025) addresses the key aspects of overarching censorship, often miscast as being "pro-social" counter-"disinformation". The framework describes that the methods for information control against contrarian views are classifiable into four types, which form an interrelated ecology: (i) flooding, (ii) ignoring, (iii) censoring, and (iv) attacking: (i) Information flooding sees dominant views presented in a unified front, overwhelming contrary views by volume and consistency. (ii) Ignoring includes the absence of research on alternative approaches, failure to report on dissenting research, and not mentioning challenging views. (iii) Censoring involves active measures to prevent the circulation of contrary information and views. (iv) Attacking includes steps taken to silence and penalise individuals with heterodox views, and campaigns to discredit alternatives to the officially-sanctioned approaches. My blog discusses how dissident accounts and their content have been (iii) censored in the Fifth Estate's most popular social media platforms. This post focuses on social media censorship techniques against accounts that are more serious than the six described in part 1. Such content suppression is best contextualised as just one strategy within a broader propaganda omniwar that has weaponised language and made deceit ubiquitous (Hughes, 2024):

#7 Concealing the sources behind dissidents' censorship

An important aspect of information control is that the sources behind it will be very well hidden from the public. For the organisers of propaganda, their ideal targets do not appreciate that they are receiving propaganda, nor should they recognise its source. Their audiences' ignorance is a key aspect of psychological warfare (otherwise known as 5th generation warfare (Abbot, 2010, Krishnan, 2024). Likewise for censors, its targets and their followers should ideally not be aware that they are being censored, nor able to identity the sources of their censorship. Accordingly, there is significant deception around the primary sources for social media censorship being the platforms themselves, and their policies. Instead, these platforms are largely responding to co-ordinated COVID-19 narrative control from G3P members who span each of the six estates*.


{* Departing from the original 'French Estates of the Realm' framework, the contemporary estates can be defined as: A First Estate that consists of the government or ruling class. The Second Estate comprises the economic or social elite—think wealthy business magnates, corporate leaders, or influential families who hold disproportionate power through money and networks. The Third Estate is the general populace who don’t wield concentrated wealth or political authority - the working and middle classes who form the bulk of citizenry. The Fourth Estate consists of journalists and news outlets who can be a distinct force where holding power to account and shaping public opinion. The Fifth Estate describes the rise of digital platforms that support the more independent collectivity of networked individuals (Dutton, 2023). This contributes to a more pluralist role of individuals in shaping democratic political accountability, whilst impacting nearly every sector of society.  During the COVID-19 event, the BMGF rivalled corporations and governments in its influence. This reflects the growing importance of the Sixth Estate (multinational non-profit organisations) in driving consensus for The Science™. The vast scale of international philanthropy from trillionaires arguably constitutes a contemporary Sixth Estate, since these charities operate as a distinct force with a unique role. In most societies, large public benefit organisations (PBOs) typically operate outside government, corporate, and traditional media spheres, while focusing on advocacy, social change, or public welfare. Large charities can mobilise resources, influence policy, and amplify disenfranchised voices in ways that neither the mainstream press, nor online platforms can do alone. Charities assumed independence from profit motives or government control gives a different kind of credibility and reach to PBOs, arguably qualifying them as a separate "estate." At the same time, large charities have greater opportunities and leverage for working towards long-term goals. In contrast, most political figures, listed companies, and other organisations have to deliver on short-term objectives, and are more exposed to critique}

Opaque choices to suppress COVID-19 counter-narratives via the Fourth and Fifth media estates were largely demanded by external Global Private Partnership parties- G3Ps are structured collaborations between international intergovernmental organisations, such as the UN, WHO and WEF, and private companies to achieve shared goals and objectives. The G3Ps form a worldwide network of stakeholder capitalists and their partners who co-operate with global governance (UN), above state and society. The UN co-operates with G3P partners to set global agendas and policies, which then cascade to people in every nation via a policy intermediary, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As a product of G3P collaborators, COVID-19 thought-policing is just one topic that the global industrial censorship complex's (GICC) broader work addresses. The GICC's activities seek to protect lucrative fabricated crises narratives as "settled science". The Science™ dictates urgent, universal solutions, which directly benefit the G3P's policy makers and corporate members- In the case of the COVID-19 event, the UN, WEF, WHO and its G3P corporate partners circumvented national sovereignty (whereby a nation’s laws cannot be subject to those of an outsider) to promote a monopolistic “World Health” policy. Its implementation primarily benefited an ‘elite cabal of media-, tech-, large pharma-, centralized finance, nongovernmental “pathophilanthropic,” and transnational corporations’ (Malone et al. 2024, p. 338). This corporatism (AKA fascism) contributed to a massive wealth gain for billionaires of $5 trillion from 2020–2021 (Oxfam, 2022). Oxfam notes that this was a larger increase than in the previous 14 years combined!

The well-funded, complicity theorists for a COVID-19 "Infodemic" (for example- Calleja et al., 2021, Caulfield, 2020, DiResta, 2022, Schiffrin, 2022) may genuinely believe in advocating for censorship as a legitimate, organic counterweight to "malinformation". In contrast, researchers at the Unlimited Hangout point out that this censorship is highly centralised, aiming at opinions that are deemed "illegitimate" merely for disagreeing with the positions of the most powerful policy makers at the G3P's macro-level. Ian Davis writes that the G3P policy makers are Chatham House, the Club of Rome, the Council of Foreign Relations, the Rockefellers and the World Economic Forum. Each guides international policy distributors, including the; International Monetary Fund, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations,  World Health Organisation, plus "philanthropists" {eg. the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)}, multinational corporations and global non-governmental organisations..

Mr Bill Gates serves as an example of the Sixth Estate exercising undue influence on public health, especially Africa's: His foundation is the largest private benefactor of the World Health Organization. The BMGF finances the health ministries in virtually every African country. Mr Gates can place conditions on that financing, such as vaccinating a certain percentage of a country’s population. Some vaccines and health-related initiatives that these countries purchase are developed by companies that Gates’ Cascade Investment LLC invests in. As a result, he can benefit indirectly from stock appreciation. This is alongside tax savings from his donations, whilst his reputation as a ‘global health leader’ is further burnished. In South Africa, the BMGF have directly funded the Department of Health, SA’s regulator SAHPRA, plus its Medical Research Council, top medical universities and the media (such as the Mail and Guardian’s health journalism centre, Bhekisisa). All would seem highly motivated to protect substantial donations by not querying Mr Gates’ vaccine altruism. However, the many challenges of the Gates Foundation’s dominating role in its transnational philanthropy must not be ignored. Such dominance poses a challenge to justice- locals’ rights to control the institutions that can profoundly impact their basic interests (Blunt, 2022). While the BMGF cannot be directly tied to COVID-19 social media account censorship, it is indisputable that Mr Gates' financial power and partner organisations indirectly suppressed dissenting voices by prioritising certain COVID-19 treatment narratives (Politico, 2022A, 2022B).

At a meso-level, select G3P policy enforcers organise that macro-level's policy directives are followed by both national governments (and their departments, such as health) and scientific authorities (including the AMA, CDC, EMA, FDA, ICL, JCVI, NERVTAG, NIH, MHRA and SAGE). Enforcers strive to prevent rival scientific ideas gaining traction, and thereby challenging its policymakers' dictates. These bodies task psychological 'nudge' specialists (Junger and Hirsch, 2024), propagandists and other experts with convincing the public to accept, and ideally buy-into, G3P policies. This involves censorship and psychological manipulation via public relations, propaganda, disinformation and misinformation. The authors of such practices are largely unattributed. Dissidents facing algorithmic censorship through social media companies' opaque processes of content moderation are unlikely to be able to identify the true originator of their censorship in a complex process. Content moderation is a 'multi-dimensional process through which content produced by users is monitored, filtered, ordered, enhanced, monetised or deleted on social media platforms' (Badouard and Bellon, 2025). This process spans a 'great diversity of actors' who develop specific practices of content regulation (p3). Actors may range from activist users and researchers who flag content, to fact-checkers from non-governmental organisations and public authorities. If such actors disclose their involvement in censorship, this may only happen much later. For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s 2024 letter to the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the Biden administration pressured Meta to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humour and satire, in 2021.


#8 Blocking a user’s access to his or her account

A social media platform may stop a user from being able to login to his or her account. Where the platform does not make this blocking obvious to a users' followers, this is deceptive. For example, Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes' Twitter account was deactivated for months after querying health authorities' motivations in deciding on interventions during the COVID-19 "pandemic". Many viewers would not recognise that his seemingly live profile was in fact inactive, since it looked to be active. The only clue was that @ProfTimNoakes had not tweeted for a long time. This was highly unusual.


This suspension followed Twitter's introduction of a “five-strike” system, with repeat offenders or egregious violations leading to permanent bans. Twitter's system tracked violations, with the first and second strikes resulting in a warning or temporary lock. A third strike resulted in a 12-hour suspension, while a 7-day suspension followed a 4th strike. Users faced a permanent ban for a 5th strike. In Professor Tim Noakes' case, he was given a vague warning regarding 'breaking community rules etc.' (email correspondence, 24.10.2022), this followed him noticing a loss of followers and his tweets reach being restricted. Twitter 'originally said I was banned for 10 hours. But after 10 hours when I  tried to re-access it they would not send me a code to enter. When I complained they just told me I was banned. When I asked for how long, they did not answer.' In reviewing his tweets, Prof. Noakes noticed that some had been (mis-)labelled by Twitter to be "misleading" before his suspension (see Figure 1 below).


@ProfTimNoakes controversial Macron tweet 24 Oct 2022
Figure 1. Screenshot of @ProfTimNoakes' "controversial" tweet on President Macron not taking COVID-19 'experimental gene therapy' (24 October, 2022)

Prof Noakes had also tweet-quoted Alec Hogg’s BizNews article regarding Professor Salim Abdool Karim’s conflicts of interest, adding 'something about' cheque book science. The @ProfTimNoakes account was in a state of limbo after seven days, but was never permanently banned. Usually, accounts placed on “read-only” mode, or temporary lockouts, required tweet deletion to regain full access. However, @ProfTimNoakes latest tweets were not visible, and he was never asked to delete any. In addition to account login blocks, platforms may also suspend accounts from being visible. But this was not applied to @ProfTimNoakes. In response to being locked out, Prof Noakes shifted to using his alternate @loreofrunning account- its topics of nutrition, running and other sports seemed safe from the reach of unknown censors' Twitter influence.


#9 Temporary suspensions of accounts (temporary user bans)

Several dissident COVID-19 experts reported temporary suspensions of their Twitter accounts after contradicting official public health narratives, or Twitter’s "COVID-19 misinformation policies". Two examples are the epidemiologist's Dr. Martin Kulldorff's account, @MartinKulldorff, and the journalist Mr Alex Berenson's, @AlexBerenson: @MartinKulldorff was temporarily suspended after a March 15, 2021 tweet stating that not everyone needed the COVID-19 vaccine, especially those with prior natural infection or young children. As this diverged from CDC guidelines, Twitter flagged the tweet to be misleading, disabling user's options to reply or like that tweet. @AlexBerenson faced multiple suspensions, also for questioning the necessity of mRNA vaccines, plus their efficacy. @AlexBerenson
was temporarily suspended in the summer of 2021, with a permanent ban following shortly after. Internal Twitter communications obtained through Berenson’s lawsuit against the platform, revealed that White House officials had raised concerns about Berenson’s account during a meeting in April with Twitter executives. Senior COVID adviser Andy Slavitt asked why Berenson 'hasn’t been kicked off the platform', suggesting that Berenson was a key source of vaccine misinformation. Berenson’s lawsuit against Twitter resulted in his reinstatement in July 2022.

#10 Permanent suspension of accounts, pages and groups (complete bans)

In contrast to Twitter's five-strikes system, Meta's Facebook's was not as formalised. It tracked violations on accounts, pages and groups. The latter serve different functions in Facebook’s system architecture (Broniatowski, et al. 2023): only page administrators may post in pages, which are designed for brand promotion and marketing. In contrast, any member may post in groups. These serve as a forum for members to build community and discuss shared interests. In addition, pages may serve as group administrators. From December 2020, Meta began removing "false claims about COVID-19 vaccines" that were "debunked by public health experts". This included "misinformation" about their efficacy, ingredients, safety, or side effects. Repeatedly sharing "debunked claims" risked escalating penalties to individual users/administrators, pages and groups. Penalties ranged from from reduced visibility to removal and permanent suspension.  For example, if a user posted that 'COVID vaccines cause infertility' "without evidence", this violated policy thresholds. The user was then asked to acknowledge the violation, or appeal. Appeals were often denied if the content clashed with official narratives.

Meta could choose to permanently ban individual-, fan page- and group- accounts on Facebook. For example, high-profile repeated offenders were targeted for removals. In November 2020, the page "Stop Mandatory Vaccination", which was one of the platform’s largest "anti-vaccine" fan pages was removed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Instagram account was permanently removed in 2021 for "sharing debunked COVID-19 vaccine claims". The non-profit he founded, Children’s Health Defense was suspended from both Facebook and Instagram in August 2022 for its repeated violations of Meta’s COVID-19 misinformation policies.

Microsoft's LinkedIn generally has stricter content moderation for professional content than other social networks. It updated its 'Professional Community Policies' for COVID-19 to prohibit content contradicting guidance from global health organisations, like the CDC and WHO. This included promoting unverified treatments and downplaying the "pandemic"’s severity. Although LinkedIn has not disclosed specific thresholds, high-profile cases evidence that the persistent sharing of contrarian COVID-19 views—especially if flagged by users, or contradicting official narratives—would lead to removal. Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Dr Robert Malone, and Mr Steve Kirsch and accounts have all been permanently suspended.


#11 Non-disclosure of information around banning's rationale for account-holders

Social media platforms' Terms of Service (TOS) may ensure that these companies are not legally obligated to share information with their users on the precise reasons for their accounts being suspended. Popular platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and X can terminate accounts at their sole discretion without providing detailed information to users. Such suspensions are typically couched opaquely in terms of policy violation (such as being in breach of community standards).


Less opaque details may be forthcoming if the platform's TOS is superseded by a country, or regional bloc's, laws. In the US, section 230 of its Communications Decency Act allows platforms to moderate content as they see fit. They are only obligated to disclose reasons under a court order, or if a specific law applies (such as one related to data privacy). By contrast, companies operating under European Union countries are expected to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). Here, platforms must provide a 'statement of reasons' for content moderation decisions, including suspensions, with some level of detail about the violation. Whilst compliant feedback must be clear and user-friendly, granular specifics may not be a DSA requirement. In the EU and USA, COVID-19 dissidents could only expect detailed explanations in response to legal appeals, or significant public pressure. Internal whistleblowing and investigative reports, such as the Facebook and Twitter files, also produced some transparency.


One outcome of this opaque feedback is that the reasons for dissidents' COVID-19 health experts' accounts being suspended are seldom made public. Even where dissidents have shared their experiences, the opaque processes and actors behind COVID-19 censorship remain unclear. Even reports from embedded researchers, such as The Center for Countering Digital Hate's "Disinformation Dozen", lack specificity. While it reported how Meta permanently banned 16 accounts, and restricted 22 others, for "sharing anti-vaccine content" in response to public reporting in 2021. However, the CCDH did not explicitly name the health experts given permanent suspensions. Hopefully, a recent 171-page federal civil rights suit by half of the dissidents mentioned in this report against the CCDH, Imran Ahmed, U.S. officials & tech giants will expose more about who is behind prominent  transnational censorship & reputational warfare (Ji, 2025).


#12 No public reports from platforms regarding account suspensions and censorship requests

Another important aspect of deception around social media censorship is that the most popular digital platforms have never provided ongoing, public reports for the number of accounts they suspend, and why. Nor do platforms that exercise censorship share ongoing information on who requests what accounts be suspended, and their rationales. Consequently, researchers and the public are unlikely to appreciate the scope of censorship that does occur on social media platforms, and who the authors behind it are, G3P policy enforcers, or otherwise.

Critical social justice as a protected ideology in Higher Education
Figure 2. Slide on 'Critical social justice as a protected ideology in Higher Education, but contested in social media hashtag communities' (Noakes, 2024)

This is an important gap due to its implications for free speech. Many 'Critical Social Justice' assumptions and beliefs seem protected from debate in Higher Education and in the Fifth Estate. Likewise, the most popular social networks of the Sixth Estate may also be providing stealthy protection for G3P agenda dogmas via censorship. As this is never made available as part of the public record, it remains mostly hidden from the public, and largely inaccessible to scholarship.

More about censorship techniques against dissenters on social networks

  1. Techniques for suppressing health experts' social media accounts, part 1 - The Science™ versus key opinion leaders challenging the COVID-19 narrative
  2. Content suppression techniques against dissent in the Fifth Estate - examples of COVID-19 censorship on social media

N.B. I am writing a third post on account censorship during COVID-19, that will cover at least three more serious techniques. Do follow me on X to learn when that is published. Please suggest improvements to this post in the comments below, or reply to my tweet thread at https://x.com/travisnoakes/status/1930989080231203126.
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Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA Cape Town, South Africa

Friday, 26 July 2024

Content suppression techniques against dissent in the Fifth Estate - examples of COVID-19 censorship on social media

Written for researchers and others interested in the many methods available to suppress dissidents' digital voices. These techniques support contemporary censorship online, posing a digital visibility risk for  dissidents challenging orthodox narratives in science.


The Fourth Estate emerged in the eighteenth century as the printing press enabled the rise of an independent press that could help check the power of governments, business, and industry. In similar ways, the internet supports a more independent collectivity of networked individuals, who contribute to a Fifth Estate (Dutton, 2023). This concept acknowledges how a network power shift results from individuals who can search, create, network, collaborate, and leak information in strategic ways. Such affordances can enhance individuals' informational and communicative power vis-à-vis other actors and institutions. A network power shift enables greater democratic accountability, whilst empowering networked agents in their everyday life and work. Digital platforms do enable online content creators to generate and share news that digital publics amplify via networked affordances (such as 💌 likes, " quotes " and sharing via # hashtag communities).


In an ideal world, social media platforms would be considered to be a public accommodation, and the Fifth Estate's users would benefit from legal protection of their original content, including strong measures against unjustified suppression and censorship. The latter should recognise the asymmetric challenges that individual dissenters, whistleblowers and their allies must confront in contradicting hegemonic social forces that can silence their opponents' (digital) voices: As recently evidenced in the COVID-19 "pandemic", the Twitter Files and other investigations reveal how multinational pharmaceutical companies, unelected global "health" organisations, national governments, social media and traditional broadcast companies all conspired to silence dissent that oppossed costly COVID-19 interventions. Regardless of their levels of expertise, critics who questioned this narrative in the Fourth or Fifth Estate were forced to negotiate censorship for the wrong-think of sharing "dangerous" opinions. 

Such sanctions reflect powerful authorities' interests in controlling (scientific) language, the window of permissable opinion, and the social discourses that the public might select from, or add. Under the pretext of public "safety", the censorship industrial complex strong arms the broadcast media and social media companies into restricting dissidents' voices as "misinformation" that is "unsafe". Facing no contest, the views of powerful officialdoms earn frequent repetition within a tightly controlled, narrow narrative window. At the same legitimate reports of mRNA injuries are falsely redefined to be "malinformation", and censored.
 
Consequently, instead of a pluralist distribution of power in the Fifth Estate that can support vital expression,  powerful authorities are enforcing internet policy interventions that increasingly surveil and censor users' digital voices. Infodemic scholars whose work endorses such suppression would seem to be ignorant of how problematic it is to define disinformation, in general. Particularly in contemporary science, where: knowledge monopolies and research cartels may be dominant; dissenting minds should be welcomed for great science, and a flawed scientific consensus can itself be dangerous. Silencing dissent has important public health ramifications, particularly where the potential for suggesting, and exploring, better interventions becomes closed. Science-, health communication, and media studies scholars may also ignore the inability of medical experts to accurately define what disinformation is, particularly where global policy makers face conflicts of interest (as in the World Health Organisation's support for genetic vaccines).

Censorship and the suppression of legitimate COVID-19 dissent is dangerously asymmetrical: health authorities already benefit from ongoing capital cascades whose exchange largely serve their interests. Such exchanges span financial, social, cultural, symbolic and even other (e.g. embodied) forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986:2018). By contrast, individual critics can quickly be silenced by attacks on their limited capital, effectively preventing their exercise of the  basic right to free speech, and delivering sustained critiques. A related concern is that the censorial actions of artificial intelligence designers and digital platform moderators are often opaque to a platforms' users. Original content creators may be unaware that they will be de-amplified for sharing unorthodox views, as algorithms penalise the visibility of content on 'banned' lists, and any accounts that amplify "wrongthink". 

Content suppression on social media is an important, but neglected topic, and this post strives to flag the wide variety of techniques that may be use in digital content suppression. Techniques are listed in order of seemingly increasingly severe techniques:

#1 Covering up algorithmic manipulation

Social media users who are not aware about censorship are unlikely to be upset about it (Jansen & Martin, 2015). Social media platforms have not been transparent about how they manipulated their recommender algorithms to provide higher visibility for the official COVID-19 narrative, or in crowding out original contributions from dissenters on social media timelines, and in search results. Such boosting ensured that dissent was seldom seen, or perceived as fringe minority's concern. As Dr Robert Malone tweeted, the computational algorithm-based method now 'supports the objectives of a Large Pharma- captured and politicised global public health enterprise'. Social media algorithms have come to serve a medical propaganda purpose that crafts and guides the 'public perception of scientific truths'. While algorithmic manipulation underpins most of the techniques listed below, it is concealed from social media platform users.


#2 Fact choke versus counter-narratives

A fact choke involves burying unfavourable commentary amongst a myriad of content. This term was coined by Margaret Anna Alice to describe how "fact checking" was abused to suppress legitimate dissent.
An example she tweeted about was the BBC's Trusted New Initiative warning in 2019 about anti-vaxxers gaining traction across the internet, requiring algorithmic intervention to neutralise "anti-vaccine" content. In response, social media platforms were urged to flood users' screens with repetitive pro-(genetic)-vaccine messages normalising these experimental treatments. Simultaneously, messaging attacked alternate treatments that posed a threat to the vaccine agenda. Fact chokes also included 'warning screens' that were displayed before users could click on content flagged by "fact checkers" as "misinformation". 

With the "unvaccinated" demonised by the mainstream media to create division, susceptible audiences were nudged to become vaccine compliant to confirm their compassionate virtue. At the same time to retain belief in mRNA genetic vaccine "safety", personal accounts, aggregated reports (such as "died suddenly" on markcrispinmiller.substack.com) and statistical reports (see Cause Unknown) for genetic vaccine injuries became suppressed as "malinformation" despite their factual accuracy. Other "controversial content", such as medical professionals' criticism of dangerous COVID-19 treatment protocols (see What the Nurses Saw) or criticism of a social media platform's policies (such as application of lifetime bans and critiques of platform speech codes) have been algorithmically suppressed.

Critical commentary may also be drowned out when platforms, such as YouTube, bury long format interviews amongst short 'deep fake' videos. These can range from featuring comments the critic never made, to fake endorsements from cybercriminals (as described on X by Whitney Webb, or Professor Tim Noakes on YouTube).

#3 Title-jacking

For the rare dissenting content that can achieve high viewership, another challenge is that title-jackers will leverage this popularity for very different outputs under exactly the same (or very similar) production titles. This makes it less easy for new viewers to find the original work. For example, Liz Crokin's 'Out of the Shadows’ documentary describes how Hollywood and the mainstream media manipulate audiences with propaganda. Since this documentary's release, several videos were published with the same title.


#4 Blacklisting trending dissent

Social media search engines typically allow their users to see what is currently the most popular content. In Twitter, dissenting hashtags and keywords that proved popular enough to feature amongst trending content, were quickly added to a 'trend blacklist' that hid unorthodox viewpoints. Tweets posted by accounts on this blacklist are prevented from trending regardless of how many likes or retweets they receive. On Twitter, Stanford Health Policy professor Jay Bhattacharya argues he was added to this blacklist for tweeting on a focused alternative to the indiscriminate COVID-19 lockdowns that many governments followed. In particular, The Great Barrington Declaration he wrote with Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, which attracted over 940,000 supporting signatures. 

After its publication, all three authors experienced censorship on search engines (Google deboosted results for the declaration), social media platforms (Facebook temporarily removed the declaration's page, while Reddit removed links to its discussion) and on video (Youtube removed a roundtable discussion with Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis whose participants questioned the efficacy and appropriateness of requiring children to wear face masks). 

#5 Blacklisting content due to dodgy account interactions or external platform links

Limited visibility filtering also occurs when comments are automatically commented on by pornbots, or feature engagement by other undesirable accounts. For example, posts mentioning the keywords/subjects such as 'vaccine, Pfizer' may receive automated forms of engagement, which then sees posts receiving such "controversial" engagement becoming added to a list ensuring these posts censorship (see 32 mins into Alex Kriel's talk on the 'The Role of Fake Bot Traffic on Twitter/X'.

Social media platforms' algorithms may also blacklist content from external platforms that are not viewed to be credible sources (for example, part of an alternative {alt-right} media), or seen as competing rivals (X penalises the visibility of posts that feature links to external platforms).

#6 Making content unlikeable and unsharable

This newsletter from Dr Steven Kirsch's (29.05.2024) described how a Rasmussen Reports video on YouTube had its 'like' button removed. As Figure 1 shows, users could only select a 'dislike' option. This button was restored for www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS_CapegoBA.

Youtube dislike Rassmussen Reports video on Vaccine Deaths
Figure 1. Youtube only offers dislike option for Rassmussen Reports video on Vaccine Deaths- sourced from Dr Steven Kirsch's newsletter (29.05.2024)  

Social media platforms may also prevent resharing such content, or prohibit links to external websites that are not supported by these platforms' backends, or have been flagged for featuring inappropriate content.


#7 Disabling public commentary

Social media platforms may limit the mentionability of content, by not offering the opportunity to quote public posts. User's right-to-reply may be blocked, and critiques may be concealed by preventing them from being linked to from replies.

#8 Making content unsearchable within, and across, digital platforms

Social media companies applied search blacklists to prevent their users from finding blacklisted content. Content contravening COVID-19 "misinformation" policies was hidden from search users. For example, Twitter applied a COVID-19 misleading information policy that ended in November, 2022. In June 20023, META began to end its policy for curbing the spread of "misinformation" related to COVID-19 on  Facebook and Instagram. 

#9  Rapid content takedowns

Social media companies could ask users to take down content that was in breach of COVID-19 "misinformation" policies, or automatically remove such content without its creators' consent. In 2021, META reported that it had removed more than 12 million pieces of content on COVID-19 and vaccines that global health experts had flagged as misinformation. YouTube has a medical misinformation policy that follows the World Health Organisation (WHO) and local health authorities guidance. In June 2021, YouTube  removed a podcast in which the evidence of a reproductive hazard of mRNA shots was discussed between Dr Robert Malone and Steve Kirsch on Prof Bret Weinstein's DarkHorse channel. Teaching material that critiqued genetic vaccine efficacy data was automatically removed within seconds for going against its guidelines (see Shir Raz, Elisha, Martin, Ronnel, Guetzkow, 2022). The WHO reports that its guidance contributed to 850,000 videos related to harmful or misleading COVID-19 misinformation being removed from YouTube between February 2020 and January 2021.

PropagandaInFocus describes how LinkedIn users are subject to a policy of misinformation that prevents content being shared that 'directly contradicts guidance from leading global health organisations and public health authorities'. Dr David Thunder shared an example of his automated LinkedIn post removal for (1) sharing a scientific study that confirmed that children are at negligible risk of suffering severe disease from COVID-19, and (2) questioning the FDA decision to approve Emergency Use Authorisation for COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old. No matter that many other studies confirm both positions, LinkedIn took this post down and threatened to restrict his account.

#10 Creating memory holes

Extensive content takedowns can serve a memory-holing aim, whereby facts and memories of the past become suppressed, erased or forgotten for political convenience. Long after the COVID-19's "pandemic", an Orwellian Ministry of Truth continues to memory-hole many health authority decision makers' failures, plus those of the mainstream media's and most national governments. As discussed here on YouTube by Mary Lou Singleton, Meghan Murphy and Jennifer Sey, such failures included: mandating masking and school-closures for children (who were never at risk); never questioning the official COVID-19 statistics (such as CNN's 'death ticker'); straight quoting Pfizer press releases as "journalism", whilst mocking individuals who chose to 'do their own research'. 

Dr Mark Changizi presents four science moments on memory-holing. In X video 1 and X video 2, he highlights how memory-holing on social media is very different from its traditional form. He uses X (formerly X) as an autobiographical tool, creating long threads that serve as a form of visual memory that he can readily navigate. The unique danger of social media account removal/suspension for censorship extends beyond losing one's history-of-'use' on that platform, to include all 'mentions' related to its content (ranging from audience likes, to their reply and quote threads). This changes the centrally-controlled communication history of what has occurred on a social media platform. Such censorship violates the free speech rights of all persons who have engaged with that removed account, even its fiercest critics, as they also lose an historical record of what they said. 

By contrast decentralised publications (such as hardcopy publications) are very hard for authorities to memory hole, since sourcing all hardcopies can be nearly impossible for censors. While winners can write history, historians who have access to historical statements can rewrite it. As COVID-19 memory-holing on social media platforms challenges such rewriting, its users must think around creating uncensorable records (such as the book Team Reality: Fighting the Pandemic of the Uninformed). In  X video 3, he highlights that freedom of expression is a liability, as expressions push reputation chips on the table. The more claims one stake's, the greater the risk to one's reputation if they're wrong. So, another aspect of memory holing lies in an individual's potential desire for memory-holing their own platform content, should they prove to be wrong. In X video 4, Dr Changizi also spotlights that the best form of memory-holing is self-censorship, whereby individuals see other accounts been suspended, or removed for expressing particular opinions. The witnesses then decide not to express such opinions, since it might endanger their ability to express other opinions. While such absence of speech is immeasurable, it would seem the most powerful memory-holing technique. Individuals' silencing their own voices do not create history.

#11 Rewriting history

Linking back to the Fact Choke technique are attempts at historical revisionism by health authoritians, and their allies. An example of this are claims in the mainstream media that critics of the orthodox narrative were "right for the wrong reasons" regarding the failure of COVID-19 lockdowns, the many negative impacts of closing schooling, businesses, and enforcing mandatory vaccination policies.

#12 Concealing the motives behind censorship, and who its real enforcers are

Social media platforms not only hide algorithmic suppression from users, but may also be misused to hide from users the full rationale for censorship, or who is ultimately behind it. Professor David Hughes prepared a glossary of deceptive terms and their true meanings (2024, pp 194-195) to highlight how the meaning of words is damaged by propaganda. A term resonating with technique #9 is “Critical” - pretending to speak truth to power whilst turning a blind eye to deep state power structures. 

The official narrative positioned COVID-19 as a (i) pandemic that had zoonotic (animal-to-human) origins, and alternate explanations were strongly suppressed. As this is the least likely explanation, other hypotheses merit serious investigation as they are more plausible. SARS-COV-2 might have stemmed from (ii) an outbreak at the Wuhan Lab's "gain of function" research, or a (iii) deliberate release in several countries from a biological weapons research project? (iv) Critics of these three explanations allege that a prior endemicity was ‘discovered’ by an outbreak of testing. Some critics even dispute the existence of SARS-COV-2, alleging that (iv) viral transmission is unproven, and that the entire  COVID-19 "pandemic" is a psychological propaganda operation. 

By silencing dissident views like these, social media platforms stop their users from learning about the many legitimate COVID-19 debates that are taking place between experts. This is not a matter of keeping users "secure" from "unsafe" knowledge, but rather networked publics being targeted for social control in the interests of powerful conspirators. In particular, the weaponised deception of social media censorship suits the agenda of the Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP or G3P), and its many stakeholders. As described by Dr Joseph Mercola in The Rise of the Global Police State, each organisational stakeholder plays a policy enforcement role in a worldwide network striving to centralise authority at a global level.

Global Public-Private Partnership G3P organogram
Figure 2. Global Public-Private Partnership (G3P) stakeholders - sourced from IainDavis.com (2021) article at https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/12/investigative-reports/the-new-normal-the-civil-society-deception.

G3P stakeholders have a strong stake in growing a censorship industrial complex to thwart legitimate dissent. Critiques of the official COVID-19 "pandemic" measures are just one example  The industrial censorship complex also strives to stifle robust critiques of (1) climate change "science", (2) "gender affirming" (transgender) surgery, (3) mass migration (aka the Great Replacement), (4) and rigged "democratic" elections, amongst other "unacceptable" opinions. Rather than being for the public's good, such censorship actually serves the development of a transhumanist, global technocratic society. The  digital surveillance dragnet of the technocracy suits the interests of a transnational ruling class in maintaining social control of Western society, and other vassals. This will be expanded upon in a future post tackling the many censorship and suppression techniques that are being against (ii) accounts.

N.B. This post is a work-in-progress and the list above is not exhaustive- kindly comment to recommend techniques that should be added, and suggestions for salient examples are most welcome.
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Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA Cape Town, South Africa

Thursday, 25 February 2021

Some background for 'Distinguishing online academic bullying: identifying new forms of harassment in a dissenting Emeritus Professor’s case'

Written for academics and researchers interested in academic cyberbullies, peer victimisation, scientific suppression and intellectual harassment.

The Heliyon journal has published Distinguishing online academic bullying: identifying new forms of harassment in a dissenting Emeritus Professor’s case. It is an open-access article that's freely available from sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402100431X.

Adjunct Professor Tim Noakes and I wrote it to foreground how the shift of academic discourse to online spaces without guardians presents cyberbullies from Higher Education (HE) with a novel opportunity to harass their peers and other vulnerable recipients. We argue that cyberbullying from HE employees is a neglected phenomenon, despite the dangers it can pose to academic free speech, as well as other negative outcomes.
Ringleader of the tormentors graphic by Create With
Background to the Online Academic Bullying (OAB) research project
The inspiration for researching OAB as a distinctive phenomenon arose during the lead author’s presentation to a research group in November, 2018. In this talk, I presented on designing new emojis as conversation stoppers for combating trolling (SAME, 2018). The attendees' questions in response suggested the necessity of researching how cyber harassment plays out in academic disputes on social media platforms.

My original PostDoc research proposal aimed to research emoji design projects in Africa, whilst also  working on the creative direction for Shushmoji™ emoji sticker sets (for example, Stop, academic bully! at https://createwith.net/academic.html). This particular set was inspired by the cyber harassment of  insulin resistance model of chronic ill-health (IRMCIH) experts on Twitter by defenders of the dominant “cholesterol” model of chronic disease development (CMCDD).

As I began my PostDoc, a review of the academic cyberbullying literature produced a surprising result. There seemed to be very little conceptual or empirical research concerning academic employees who harass scholars online. In response to a neglected negative phenomenon that would seem highly important to study, my PostDoc's focus shifted to initiating the Online Academic Bullying (OAB) research project.

Nitpicker_who_does_not_add_to_the_debate graphic from Create With
Professor Noakes and I then setup the new research theme, Academic free speech and digital voices, under The Noakes Foundation. Under this theme, the OAB research project’s first stage (2018-2021) has focused on proposing a theoretically grounded conceptualisation for a recipient's experiences of OAB. We wrote 'Distinguishing online academic bullying' over a two year period in which the theoretical lens was refined to better address OAB's distinguishing characteristics. Our manuscript underwent four major rewrites and three revisions to accommodate diverse reviewers' plus an editor's constructive criticism.

Academic free speech and digital voices
Many studies in the field of scientific communication have focused on the dissemination of medical disinformation. By contrast, very few seem to explore the legitimate use of digital voice by scientific experts and health professionals who must work around scientific suppression in HE. In the Health Sciences scientific suppression and intellectual harassment is particularly dangerous where it: 
  1. entrenches an outdated and incorrect scientific model; 
  2. suppresses scholarly debate over rival models; 
  3. continues to support poor advice and interventions that result in sub-par outcomes versus proven and relatively inexpensive alternatives. 

It would seem unethical to suppress the testing of scientific models and development of academic knowledge that may greatly benefit public health. Nevertheless, this continues to occur in HE regarding the academic free speech of IRMCIH scholars. Although there is growing evidence for their model and the efficacy of its interventions, the rival blood lipid hypothesis and CMCCD model for the causation of heart disease largely remains the only one taught and researched by medical schools. There are few examples of legitimate debates between IRMCIH and CMCDD scholars in HE (Lustig, 2013; Taubes, 2007; 2011; 2017; 2020; Teicholz, 2014). Opportunities for IRMCIH research and teaching in HE are heavily constrained by scientific suppression of CMCDD dissenters (Noakes and Sboros, 2017, 2019).

In HE, scientific suppression can be understood as a normative category of impedance that is unfair, unjust and counter to the standards of academic behaviour (Delborne, 2016). Such impedance is apparent in the treatment of dissenting scholars who challenge the CMCDD model, then become ostracised from the Health Sciences as "heretics". In theory, universities should encourage academic free speech and robust debate on the CMCDD versus IRMCIH models. By contrast, in HE practice, IRMCIH scholars cannot exercise their rights to academic free speech.

Academic freedom is a special right of academics- a right to freedom from prescribed orthodoxy in their teaching, research, and lives as academics (Turk, 2014). This right seeks to avoid corruption from the vested interests of other parties, which ranges from scholarly peers and university board members to corporate donors. This right is foundational in supporting scholars to advance and expand knowledge, for example by accommodating diverse voices (Saloojee, 2013).

Academic free speech is a failed ideal where IRMCIH scholars do not enjoy opportunities to research and teach this emergent paradigm. Instead, dissenting IRMCHI scientists must negotiate scientific suppression by a multitude of entrenched networks and embedded academics. These have varied stakes in the medical establishment's highly profitable “cholesterol” model and its costly, but largely ineffective, interventions. This orthodox regime heavily constrains the IRMCIH model's development, whilst applying double-standards for evidence and proof. These demands typically ignore the sociological context of scientific knowledge. It flags key constraints, including:
  1. The relatively minuscule funding for IRMCIH studies 
  2. Many unethical ”ethical" or pseudo-skeptic "scientific" arguments used for delaying IR research projects
  3. Long-standing anti-IRMCIH, pro- CMCDD scholarly citation rings
  4. Academic mobs that defame IR scholars and create a chilling effect for their colleagues
  5. Likewise, pseudoskeptic academics, politicians and "science" journalists may unwittingly serve as agents of industry by diverting public attention from Fiat science™ and consensus silence to IRMCIH “failures”.

Online academic bullying as an emergent extension of scientific censorship 
Mob dogpiler graphic from Create With

A contemporary form of censorship exists that denies attention and stifles opportunities for turning scholarship and innovation into better options for public policy (Tufekci, 2017). For IRMCIH experts, cyber harassment has emerged as a 21st century form of attention-denial that CMCDD's defenders leverage. They apply a range of strategies to stifle dissident scientists' and health experts' outreach to online audiences and affinity networks. As this 21st century censorship matrix illustrates, cyber harassment is just one of many visible and direct strategies that powerful networks have used to censor dissenting IRMCIH scholars in HE.



With a wide range of vitriolic critics within and outside academia, we focused on the case of an Emeritus Professor as a convenience sample. He had first-hand exposure to OAB for almost a decade across varied social media platforms. In 'Distinguishing online academic bullying', OAB is clearly differentiated from the traditional forms of bullying (eg. academic mobbing) that he had to negotiate after taking the unorthodox, but scientific, position for IRMCIH. Major aspects are shown in the article's abstract graphic, below- academic cyberbullies strategies in OAB may range from misrepresenting an employer's position as "official" to hypercritical academic bloggers whose chains of re-publication become sourced for defamatory online profiles.

Distinguishing online academic bullying abstract graphic

There were also many minor forms that we may cover in a future article. For example, scholars' could signal ostracism in small ways, such as removing the Emeritus Professor as a co-contributor on their Google Scholar profiles.

Reporting on cyber-victimisation with routine activity theory
While writing our article, we also developed a reporting instrument for OAB recipients. Targets of academic cyberbullies can use a Google form at https://bit.ly/3pnyE6w to develop reports on their experiences of cyber harassment. They can share it with decision- and policy-makers at the institutions they are targeted from, as well as our OAB research project. This reporting instrument is based on Routine Activity Theory (RAT) and is being refined with IRMCIH and other experts' feedback. 

The problem of cyber harassment is not easy to fix, since it requires individual, systemic and collective action (Hodson, Gosse, Veletsianos, & Houlden, 2018). We hope that spotlighting OAB’s distinctive attacks will raise awareness amongst researchers and institutional policy makers. We argue that it is important for HE employers and related professional organisations to consider strategies that can guard against academic cyberbullies and their negative impacts.

Academic myopia graphic from Create With

Credits
Stop, academic bully! shushmoji™ graphics courtesy of Create With, Cape Town.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the funders, software developers, researchers and Heliyon's reviewers who have made the best version of this article possible: 

The Noakes Foundation’s project team of Jayne Bullen, Jana Venter, Alethea Dzerefos Naidoo and Sisipho Goniwe have contributed to expanding the scope of the researchers’ OAB project. The software development contributions of Yugendra ‘Darryl’ Naidoo, Cheryl Mitchell and the support of Alwyn van Wyk (Younglings) and the developers Tia Demas, Ruan Erasmus, Paul Geddes, Sonwabile Langa and Zander Swanepoel have enabled the researchers to gain the broadest view of Twitter’s historical data. The feedback from the South African Multimodality in Education research group after the authors’ shared the Emeritus Professor’s case indirectly suggested the topic of this article. Mark Phillips and Dr Cleo Protogerou’s feedback on the ensuing manuscripts proved invaluable in guiding it into a tightly-focused research contribution. We would also like to thank CPUT’s Design Research Activities Workgroup (DRAW) for its feedback on a progress presentation, especially Professor Alettia Chisin, Dr Daniela Gachago and Associate Professor Izak van Zyl. He and Adjunct Professor Patricia Harpur provided valuable guidance that helped shape the OAB reporting tool into a productive research instrument.
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