Facebook is ironically censoring an MRC story that calls out another platform’s suppression of a study questioning the safety of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
MRC Free Speech America staff writer/researcher Catherine Salgado on Oct. 10 posted to Facebook her report on Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo getting censored by Twitter for sharing results of a Florida Department of Health study showing cardiac-related death increased 84 percent in men aged 18-39 within 28 days of COVID-19 mRNA vaccination.
Facebook on Thursday put a warning label on Salgado’s post, stating it was “missing context” and “could mislead people.”
In addition to censoring Salgado’s account, Facebook censored four other MRC accounts in connection with the Florida Department of Health study, including NewsBusters, Free Speech America, CNSNews, and MRC’s main account.
The speech police, a.k.a. Facebook, added a stern reprimand against those who engage in free speech. “People who repeatedly share false information might have their posts moved lower in News Feed so other people are less likely to see them,” the warning label says.
Facebook applied a warning label – similar to an interstitial – requiring users to click through the label to see the original post. Facebook users fail to click through fact-check interstitials 95 percent of the time, AP News reported in April 2020. This means MRC’s post likely received much less reach than it would’ve had it not been censored.
When it censored Salgado, Facebook linked out to a supposed “fact-check” by Health Feedback. Health Feedback’s parent organization Science Feedback is part of the Poynter International Fact-Checking (IFCN) Network, which is funded in part by liberal billionaires George Soros and Pierre Omidyar. Facebook partners with IFCN to “fact-check” certain posts, which restricts their reach.
The “key take away” of that fact-check was that studies “much larger” than the Florida one found benefits of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to outweigh the risks, “even in people at the highest risk of post-vaccine myocarditis,” according to Health Feedback.
But studies and perspectives countering the positive mainstream narrative on COVID-19 abound. MRC’s CensorTrack in February documented over 800 cases of Big Tech censoring COVID-19-related posts.
Facebook in February 2021 deleted The Great Barrington Declaration's official page. The Great Barrington Declaration was developed by a prominent group of international disease experts who have been critical of COVID-19 lockdowns.
America First Legal recently shared documents indicating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communicated with Twitter, Facebook and Google personnel to censor so-called “vaccine misinformation.”
Big Tech has censored Salgado four times this year, including Facebook censoring her three times in June for COVID-19 content. The last June post called out The Vatican’s issuance of a coin “celebrating the ineffective, dangerous, abortion-tainted Covid-19 vaccines.” Facebook slapped a June 5 Health Feedback “fact-check” on another June post by Salgado. The fact-check linked out to her Substack article highlighting a German study showing that mask mandates didn’t restrict the spread of the virus.
Facebook applied another “fact-check” on a post of a June 3 article by Salgado citing feminist Dr. Naomi Wolf, who claimed COVID-19 vaccines were causing a “genocide” of babies.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide an equal footing for conservatives.
