Paiten Iselin
Paiten Iselin is a researcher and video creator in the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America division. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Liberty University, earning a B.S. in Strategic Communication: Social Media Management. Prior to that, she was an actress, voice over artist, and content creator.
Big Tech, the American federal government and leftist elites are now plainly advocating for censorship of any information they don’t agree with, even if that information is verifiably true.
Mal-information is the latest ugly offspring in the censorship family tree. Unlike its more well-known cousins “mis-” and “dis-information,” mal-information specifically targets true information.
A recent Twitter Files drop exposed a coalition of government agencies, academia and NGOs who were actively scouring the internet for COVID-19 information they deemed unfit for the internet.
Stanford University’s Virality Project was especially aggressive, according to emails released in The Twitter Files. In these emails, the Virality Project specifically called for action against “True content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.”
Facebook has also admitted to censoring true content, as revealed in the Twitter Files. In an email exchange with the World Health Organization, Facebook said it was “focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation” including “often-true content.”
If this isn’t proof of Big Tech’s bias, I don’t know what is.
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden was one of the medical professionals silenced for her views on COVID-19 vaccines, alternative treatments, mandates and lockdowns. She condemned censorship of COVID-19 information because it prevented individuals from obtaining informed consent.
“Informed consent is very important. Patients are not getting informed consent with these vaccines. The package insert on these things, it’s completely blank. And I haven’t talked to any patients that had a, you know, balanced discussion over risks versus benefits of these vaccines,” she told MRC Free Speech America. “[A]nd if the doctors aren’t going to do it in person, then we should be allowed to do it online.”
Bowden also called out Big Tech companies for censoring information about COVID-19 vaccines under the guise of preventing vaccine hesitancy. “That’s wrong,” she said. “That just violates medical ethics 101.”
If leftists can’t outright block information from the online public square, their backup plan appears to be brainwashing the public into self-censorship.
An article published in November of 2022 in the Current Directions in Psychological Science journal called on readers to pursue “critical ignoring” as a solution to so-called misinformation.
“Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps, and information disorders,” the authors of the journal article said.
And our academic elites wonder why we have a hard time taking them seriously.
