Recent investigations and disclosures have demonstrated that the Virality Project that partnered with Big Tech censorship to combat “anti-vaccine disinformation”, was conceived by the security state.A Nov 10 report by the House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, reporting from Public, and new Twitter Files from Matt Taibbi show that the department of homeland security (DHS) and the (CISA) instigated the Election Integrity Partnership, the precursor to the Virality Project.Explicit proof may be found in a July 31, 2020 email from Digital Forensics Lab’s Graham Brookie to his Atlantic Council colleagues. “We just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA,” he wrote. DFRLabs was an EIP and Virality Project partner. As substacker Andrew Lowenthal explains, they also operate in “digital rights” and “anti-disinformation” fields.The house investigation showed the Virality Project used “the same Jira system from EIP,” which means the same infrastructure, with all the same core partners. Journalists Alex Gutentag and Andrew Lowenthal dove into the Virality Project tickets on Nov. 10, demonstrating they went wildly beyond raising “vaccine-related disinformation narratives”.Twitter Files published by Matt Taibbi in March, which revealed that SIO’s so-called “Virality Project” had pushed platforms to treat user concerns about vaccine mandates and passports as “disinformation” and to consider “stories of true vaccine side effects” to be actionable content on social media. Twitter Files also showed that the Virality Project began work in late 2020, almost immediately after the election.However, a Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) spokesperson issued outright denials, saying SIO “did not censor or ask social media platforms to remove any social media content regarding coronavirus vaccine side effects.” SIO claimed Taibbi’s findings were “inaccurate and based on distortions of email exchanges in the Twitter Files.”However, documents revealed by the house showed that DHS conspired to violate the Second Amendment and interfere in elections. “EIP reconstituted as the Virality Project” they say, and continued working with the federal government. The Twitter Files found the project partnered “with several government agencies,” including CISA, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).The Virality Project, acting for DHS and CISA, worked directly with employees at Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok, and others, who were all signed up to their Jira system. Those companies regularly assured the project that they were addressing the content it flagged.Companies responded with comments like, “Thanks for flagging this. We have actioned the content,” or “Thanks for escalating to us — our team is looking into this now.” The Virality Project kept track of actions on the content it flagged, and was frequently successful in getting content labeled or removed by platforms, and in getting users suspended. The Virality Project frequently flagged true and debatable content, leading to censorship. For example, after Krispy Kreme announced free donuts for people who got vaccinated, the Virality Project alerted platforms about “criticism against Krispy Kreme’s vaccine for donut promo” and labeled such criticism as “general anti-vaccination.”When Pfizer claimed that its vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 was 100% effective, the project reported that “anti-vaccine groups” were expressing concerns about mandates for children and “disbelief at the 100% efficacy number.”The project also tagged for censorship “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy,” according to the Twitter Files. This included “viral posts of individuals expressing vaccine hesitancy or stories of true vaccine side effects.” The project said such posts were not “mis or disinformation, but it may be malinformation (exaggerated or misleading). Also included in this bucket are often true posts which could fuel hesitancy, such as individual countries banning certain vaccines.”On Substack, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty said these interventions contravened informed consent and the Nuremberg code.
