The UK government's secretive Counter-Disinformation Unit was used during the pandemic to monitor social media posts critical of lockdowns and Covid vaccination of children, including some by prominent scientists.
Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent | The Telegraph - Investigations team and Tony Diver,
June 2, 2023 - "A secretive government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of controversial lockdown policies during the pandemic, The Telegraph can reveal. The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to tackle supposed domestic 'threats', and was used to target those critical of lockdown and questioning the mass vaccination of children. Critics of lockdown had posts removed from social media. There is growing suspicion that social media firms used technology to stop the posts being promoted, circulated or widely shared after being flagged by the CDU or its counterpart in the Cabinet Office.
"Documents revealed under Freedom of Information (FoI) and data protection requests showed that the activities of prominent critics of the Government’s Covid policies were secretly monitored. An artificial intelligence firm (AI) was used by the Government to scour social media sites. The company flagged discussions opposing vaccine passports. Many of the issues being raised were valid at the time and have since been proven to be well-founded. The BBC also took part in secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation.
"On Friday, MPs and freedom of speech campaigners condemned the disclosures as 'truly chilling' and 'a tool for censoring British citizens akin to those of the Chinese Communist Party.... In America, Twitter has released similar information showing how the US government also introduced a secretive programme to curtail discussion of Covid lockdowns.
"It can now be revealed that the activities of Prof Carl Heneghan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), were monitored by government disinformation units. Molly Kingsley, who set up a campaign to keep schools open during the pandemic, also had her social activity monitored....
"The CDU, which is still operating, was embedded in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The department has 'trusted flagger' status at social media companies including Facebook and Twitter, which means that requests for content to be removed are fast-tracked for consideration. In some cases, individuals whose social media posts were recorded by the units have subsequently faced sanctions by Twitter and Facebook. Ministers denied asking for posts by Prof Heneghan, Dr de Figueiredo or Ms Kingsley to be removed....
"The Government also ran a Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum, which brought together civil servants from the DCMS and technology giants - including Facebook and Google - as well as the BBC to discuss how to limit the spread of what was considered Covid-19 disinformation..... The Lockdown Files, published by The Telegraph earlier this year, revealed that Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, repeatedly lobbied Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and now a Facebook executive, about vaccine misinformation.
"The CDU was established in 2019 and was focused on the European elections before turning to focus on the pandemic. During Covid, the unit worked closely with the Cabinet Office’s now defunct RRU, whose responsibilities included tackling 'purported "experts" issuing dangerous misinformation'. The RRU has admitted in an FoI obtained by Big Brother Watch and passed to The Telegraph that it made requests for social media posts to be taken down....
"A government spokesman said: 'The unit’s purpose is to track narratives and trends using publicly available information online to protect public health and national security. It has never tracked the activity of individuals and has a blanket ban on referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms. None of the people named in this report were ever referred to social media platforms by the Government and any claim otherwise is objectively false.' A BBC spokesman said the broadcaster attended the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum in an observer-only capacity."
Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/02/counter-disinformation-unit-government-covid-lockdown/
How the British government manipulated social media to suppress opposition to its COVID-19 policies | History Debunked | June 3, 2023:
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