Will private speech on text messages be censored in the U.S. to prevent “misinformation” about Covid-19?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to a report in POLITICO magazine, “Biden allied groups including the Democratic National Committee [DNC] are planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers (text carriers) to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text message.”

Or in other words: the DNC is said to be planning to censor any “misinformation” about vaccines that private citizens receive privately over text messages.

https://vimeo.com/574896804

So, what does misinformation mean? Misinformation is not the same as false information, as factually inaccurate information.

Misinformation, in this case, seems to be anything the Biden administration does not want the people to know including, for example, how effective the Covid vaccines actually are and what the potential side effects might be from taking them, says Tucker Carlson in his show (watch video).

So, let’s say you’re interested to find out some information and you looked it up from the Biden administration’s own websites. Let’s say you start with the VAERS database, which records vaccine harm. You would no longer be allowed to text what you find on their databases to other people in the United States. Your private conversations would be controlled by the DNC.

Read also: Deaths occurring after Covid-19 vaccinations have become hot topic in the U.S.

If a government can ban discussion of the drug they are making people take, what can’t they do? And why are they doing this now? Why are they expanding censorship of conversation about the pandemic as the pandemic recedes, asks Carlson.

THE CENSORSHIP ADVOCATES SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY

The Biden administration is casting conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme, adopting a more aggressive political posture in an attempt to maneuver through the public health conundrum, Politico writes in a feature on July 12.

According to this reading, the White House has decided to hit back harder on what they call misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics.

“The big misinterpretation that Fox News or whoever else is saying is that they are essentially envisioning a bunch of federal workers knocking on your door, telling you you’ve got to do something that you don’t want to do,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview on Sunday. “That’s absolutely not the case, it’s trusted messengers who are part of the community doing that — not government officials. So that’s where I think the disconnect is.”

Fauci took some of that messaging to Sunday cable news shows, including underscoring the idea that door-to-door vaccination efforts are an attempt to remove barriers to access and that 99.5 percent of deaths due to Covid are among people who are unvaccinated.

“Those data kind of hit you right between the eyes,” Fauci said of the fatalities.

Beyond Fauci, press secretary Jen Psaki has pushed back on Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who compared the administration’s vaccine campaign to Nazis.

Jeff Zients, the White House’s Covid response director, rebuked Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who contended falsely in a tweet that government “agents” were going door-to-door to “compel vaccination.”

Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel alleged misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages, continues Politico.

The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely, writes Politico.

“We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country’s public health and will not shy away from calling that out.”

The pushback is a change of tone and approach from earlier this year when the White House often chose to ignore its most vocal conservative critics out of a desire not to elevate them. It is a tacit acknowledgment that the July 4 goal of 70 percent vaccination nationwide was overly optimistic, if not naive.

And it underscores that two realities are setting in: It’s becoming more difficult to convince vaccine-skeptics to get their shots (of the 10 least vaccinated states, all were won by Donald Trump in 2020) and the anti-vaccine voices, already vocal in the country, are becoming more mainstream by Republicans eager to oppose Biden-led initiatives, added Politico.

Those who are door-knocking are individuals like pastors or grassroots organizers, not government bureaucrats. And they are not delivering vaccines, but spreading the word on where and how to get vaccinated, and why it’s important to do so. To the degree that people understand that, the White House reasons, it could have a positive impact on increasing vaccinations, writes Politico.

That hasn’t stopped conservative media figures from misrepresenting those efforts in strident, almost apocalyptic terms, the magazine continues.

Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump co-founder of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, said on Fox last week that he was embarking on a “massive public relations campaign” around vaccination efforts, which he compared it to an “Apartheid-style open air hostage situation.” (Turning Point’s other founder, Bill Montgomery, died last year from coronavirus-related complications.)

In an interview with Right Side Broadcasting during the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) offered a different variety of false scare tactics, suggesting that the administration would use door-to-door vaccination efforts as a means to “take your guns” and “your Bibles.”

The White House didn’t respond to Kirk or Cawthorn. But after Parson sent a tweet attacking the door-to-door approach, Zients went after the Missouri governor directly.

“Organizations that are feeding misinformation and trying to mischaracterize this type of trusted-messenger work, I believe you are doing a disservice to the country and to the doctors, the faith leaders, community leaders,” Zients said at a news conference last week.

Psaki offered a similar type of pushback on Friday when asked about South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s push for the state’s Department of Health to prohibit ‘door to door’ tactics in the State’s ongoing vaccination efforts.

With information from Fox News, Politico