New Twitter Files reveal pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media over COVID vaccine content
"The push included direct pressure from Pfizer partner BioNTech to censor activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries," Fang wrote.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has been vocal about transparency when it comes to
Twitter's past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content. He has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the "Twitter Files" that continue to expose once-secret communications.
"But global drug giants saw the crisis as an opportunity for unprecedented profit. Behind closed doors, pharma launched a massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents/IP for new covid-related medicine, including therapeutics and vaccines," Fang wrote. "BIO, the lobby group that represents biopharma, including Moderna & Pfizer, wrote to the newly elected Biden admin, demanding the U.S. gov sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost covid medicine or vaccines."
Fang then got into Twitter's involvement.
"The global lobbying blitz includes direct pressure on social media. BioNTech, which developed Pfizer's vaccine, reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines," Fang wrote to accompany an internal email.