Twitter locked talkshow host and author Dave Rubin out of his account and forced him to delete a tweet where he called out federal vaccine mandates and noted that people with the vaccine are getting and transmitting COVID.
“They want a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines that are clearly not working as promised just a few weeks ago,” Rubin said in the now-deleted tweet. “People are getting and transmitting COVID despite vax. Plus now they’re prepping us for booster shots. A sane society would take a pause. We do not live in a sane society.”
Twitter flagged the tweet for allegedly “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19” and ordered him to delete the tweet to regain access to his account.
But Rubin fired back by noting that the so-called misleading and potentially harmful information in the tweet echoed recent statements from President Joe Biden and the mainstream media.
“Everything I said in this tweet is true,” Rubin said. “Biden mentioned federal mandate today, the vax obviously isn’t working as intended, and Pfizer is talking booster shots.”
Rubin pointed to several mainstream media articles that agree with the points he made in the tweet including a USA Today article describing Biden’s Thursday announcement of some vaccine mandates, a Washington Post article that describes how the director of Emory Vaccine Center was Walter A. Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center “struck by data showing that vaccinated people who became infected with delta shed just as much virus as those who were not vaccinated,” and a CNN article about Pfizer releasing new data that supports a third booster shot.
In an interview with Fox News, Rubin described how Big Tech’s misinformation rules are only applied to certain perspectives while others get a pass.
“If they’re going to delete people for misinformation, you’d have to delete basically every single Democrat on Twitter because they all claimed that there was Russian collusion, that Trump was an agent of Russia for four years, they claimed that Brett Kavanaugh was a serial rapist, they claimed that the Covington kids were all racist, they claimed that Jussie Smollett was almost lynched, Hillary Clinton tweeted that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president, there are all endless lies from these people,” Rubin said. “Who decides what COVID misinformation is? If you’re banned for COVID misinformation, Fauci should be banned from the internet in perpetuity.”
This is the latest of many examples of independent creators being censored for posts about the coronavirus while those deemed to be “authoritative sources” by Big Tech get a pass.
Last year, numerous mainstream media outlets that are often boosted by Big Tech for supposedly being authoritative sources downplayed the coronavirus by suggesting that it’s no more dangerous than the flu and advised against wearing masks. These outlets weren’t censored by Big Tech, even after rules were introduced that expressly prohibit claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the flu or claims that wearing a face mask does not help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, independent creators or members of the public that simply debate or question these same issues are swiftly censored by the tech giants.
