The pharmaceutical companies behind the vaccines against COVID-19 have reportedly asked the social network Twitter to silence activists who have called for patents to be shared with the rest of the world.
The case revealed by the very serious American investigative media The Intercept has everything of a new scandal for the big companies of the pharmaceutical industry, and incidentally for Twitter. At the very end of 2020, a lobbyist working at the time for Twitter Germany and specializing in public policy, Nina Morschhaeuser, was alerted by the government across the Rhine and the company BioNTech about a campaign to target, on the social network, Big Pharma developing a vaccine against COVID-19. The case went far, as Twitter came under pressure to silence activists wanting patent sharing and vaccinating poorer populations with generic doses.
Twitter employee allegedly received censorship request backed by German government
Activists were planning to launch a short two-day campaign on Twitter calling on big pharma to temporarily lift patents and all intellectual property associated with the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Such a measure would have contributed to the production without delay, and at a lower cost, of generic vaccines which would have enabled underdeveloped countries or those with a tottering health system to deal more effectively with the pandemic.
Nina Morschhaeuser was therefore alerted to this imminent activist campaign by being informed by the German government of the possible creation of fake accounts, or even of the takeover of the user accounts of certain leaders of vaccine manufacturers. If the former Twitter employee immediately relayed the word to the platform’s security teams at the blue bird, she also sent an email this time from BioNTech spokesperson Jasmina Alatovic. asking to “hide” (therefore to hide) the tweets of accounts that would target that of his company, and this, during the two days of campaign. All this, says Ms. Morschhaeuser, on behalf of the Federal Office for Information Security, a very important German administrative body.
Morschhaeuser therefore asked his Twitter colleagues to monitor two hashtags allegedly used by patent enforcement activists (#PeoplesVaccine and #JoinCTAP), adding that the group Global Justice Now had shared an online form used to register for a day of action against vaccines.
All means are good to control activists
What isn’t entirely clear yet is the exact role Twitter has had and the specific steps the California-based company has taken to align with BioNTech’s request, which in its most strict interpretation simply amounts to censorship. BioNTech and the government claimed that this campaign against the labs would violate Twitter’s TOS, but it seems that the social network’s security teams disagreed at the time.
On the other hand, what is certain is that BioNTech did not content itself with asking Twitter directly to carry out a moderation at will of content advocating the lifting of patents. A nonprofit known as Public Good Projects has worked closely with Twitter to develop bots that can censor vaccine misinformation (whether frivolous or argued), and send direct requests to the firm. of San Francisco, to which were attached lists of accounts to verify and censor.
The Intercept was also able to get his hands on exchanges between a Twitter lobbyist and a manager of Public Good Projects. The campaign would have been, hang on tight, funded by a lobby group, called BIO, funded by…Moderna and Pfizer, among others. This was responsible for reporting content on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Instagram.
Very powerful lobbying, which helped protect the colossal interests of big pharmaceutical companies
Very recently, last November, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (a British investigative NGO) published a report in which it shows how big pharma has insisted on stifling patent sharing efforts and lifting of intellectual property, undertaken by activists. Lobbying was also conducted to block support for a special waiver from the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was necessary for the creation of a generic drug against the coronavirus. BioNTech would have succeeded, once again, in obtaining the support of the German government to oppose this derogation. And the support then provided by Joe Biden, India and South Africa will not have changed anything. Opposition from other developed countries was stronger.
Unsurprisingly, associates Pfizer and BioNTech then generated record profits for the pharmaceutical industry, with sales of $37 billion in 2021 alone thanks to its messenger RNA vaccine. For its part, Moderna made some $17.7 billion the same year with its own vaccine. And to think that its Marseille CEO, Stéphane Bancel, just announced just a week ago his desire to increase the price of the vaccine by… 400%!
” Trying to stifle digital dissent during a pandemic, when tweets and emails are among the only forms of protest available to those cooped up at home, is deeply sinister. “, regrets the director of Global Justice Now, Nick Dearden. This case shows us once again that economic interests have taken precedence over ethics, morals and the health of millions of human beings left by the wayside.
Source : The Intercept
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