When the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, what I call 3/11, it unleashed not just a health response but a coordinated global reset. What began as “two weeks to flatten the curve” metastasized into the most sweeping peacetime curtailment of civil liberties in modern history: lockdowns, mandates, behavioral manipulation, censorship, and the rise of digital authoritarianism.
This excerpt from Chapter 16 of my new book 3/11 Viral Takeover lays bare how the Covid response became the pretext for normalizing government-directed censorship, throttling legitimate scientific debate, and entrenching state power over public discourse.
After 3/11, governments did not merely request moderation, they demanded it. Backed by explicit threats of regulatory consequences. In the United States, the declassified “Twitter files” released between 2022 and 2023, along with the landmark Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, later known as Murthy v. Missouri, revealed a sustained multi-agency campaign of coercion that went far beyond polite suggestions.
Shortly after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022, he released internal documents, known as the “Twitter files” to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig, Alex Berenson, and Paul D. Thacker, exposing how federal agencies routinely flagged content for removal or suppression.
The files showed White House officials, including former Press Secretary Jen Psaki, directly pressuring Twitter to censor true posts about vaccine side effects, natural immunity, and lockdown harms. Government agencies, including the DHS, CDC, FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), used specialized reporting mechanisms, such as Facebook’s “Content Request System,” to flag social media content for potential throttling, suppression, or removal, often under the umbrella of countering “mis-, dis-, and malinformation.”
The files demonstrated that platforms complied not out of independent policy, but out of fear of antitrust action, Section 230 reform, or other regulatory retaliation.
The most consequential legal challenge was Missouri v. Biden, mentioned earlier. It was filed in May 2022 by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana, alleging that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by coercing social media companies to suppress protected speech. The case expanded to include private plaintiffs, including Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, and Jill Hines, co-authors and advocates of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Key revelations from discovery showed White House officials repeatedly berating Facebook and Twitter executives for not doing enough to censor vaccine-related content. Emails revealed direct pressure: “We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy – period.”
In July 2021, President Biden publicly accused platforms like Facebook of “killing people” by allowing vaccine misinformation to spread. White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield followed up by saying platforms “should be held accountable” and that the administration was “reviewing” Section 230 protections, which shield platforms from liability for user content.
This dynamic was laid bare even more starkly during Congressional testimony on the Twitter files and government weaponization. In the March 9, 2023 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified on the Twitter files revelations. Taibbi described the government’s role as creating a “censorship-industrial complex,” while Shellenberger detailed how federal agencies pressured platforms to suppress Covid-related dissent, including accurate information on vaccine side effects and origins. Shellenberger stated: “The Twitter Files show the government was directly involved in suppressing speech.”
In a July 2023 hearing of the US House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) confronted Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust & Safety:
Rep. Mace: “Why do you think you or anyone else had the medical expertise to censor a doctor’s expert opinion? Did the US government ever contact you or anyone at Twitter to censor or moderate certain Tweets? Yes or no?”
Mr. Gadde: “We receive legal demands to remove content from the platform from the US government and governments all around the world…”
Rep. Mace: “Thank God for Elon Musk for allowing to show us and the world that Twitter was basically a subsidiary of the FBI, censoring real medical voices with real expertise that put real Americans’ lives in danger because they didn’t have that information.”
The exchange crystallized the reality: unelected platform executives, under direct government pressure, were overriding the expertise of licensed physicians and researchers, often with life-or-death consequences.
The report, “The Censorship-Industrial Complex” (May 1, 2024, by House Judiciary Republicans) is perhaps the most comprehensive in detailing the Biden White House coercion of Facebook/Meta, YouTube/Google, and Amazon to censor Covid-19-related content, including true information, satire, and criticism, via emails implying regulatory threats.
Some key individuals cited in the emails include: Andrew Slavitt, Senior Advisor to the White House Covid-19 Response Team (January to June 2021). Sir Nick Clegg (former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom), President of Global Affairs at Meta (formerly Facebook) from 2018 until early 2025. Robert Flaherty, Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy at the White House during the Biden administration (2021–2023). Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, US Surgeon General during the Biden administration, who took over as lead petitioner after the change in
administration and appeal to the Supreme Court, in the Missouri v. Biden case. The following list highlights these key emails and internal communications taken from the report:
March 2, 2021 (Slavitt to Amazon VP): Criticized “high levels of propaganda/ misinformation” in vaccine book searches; stated CDC warnings insufficient, prompting “Do Not Promote” policy for anti-vax books (Page 7, The Amazon Files).
March 15, 2021 (Slavitt to Facebook): “Internally we have been considering our options on what to do about it” re: perceived lack of transparency on hesitancy data (Page 18, The Facebook Files).
April 18, 2021 (Slavitt to Clegg/Facebook): “Outraged” over satirical meme comparing vaccines to asbestos; demanded removal as it “inhibits confidence” (Page 29, The Facebook Files).
April 21, 2021 (Flaherty to Facebook): “Not for nothing, but last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection” re: Tucker Carlson video (Page 26, The Facebook Files).
April 27, 2021 (Draft Meta to Zuckerberg/Sandberg): White House demanded removal of “vaccine discouraging humorous meme” despite it being “humorous/satirical and arguably true” (Page 33, The Facebook Files).
July 14, 2021 (Internal Meta to Clegg): Censored lab-leak theory “Because we were under pressure from the [Biden] administration…We shouldn’t have done it” (Page 13, The Facebook Files).
July 21, 2021 (Internal Meta to Clegg): White House/Surgeon General wanted removal of “true information about side effects,” “negative opinions,” and “satirical content suggesting vaccine isn’t safe” (Page 43, The Facebook Files).
August 2, 2021 (Internal Meta): Brainstormed “additional policy levers…to be more aggressive against misinformation” due to “continued criticism from the [Biden] administration” (Page 46, The Facebook Files).
August 10, 2021 (Internal Meta to Clegg): Scoped four changes to censor vaccine content per Surgeon General’s (Dr. Vivek H. Murthy) request (Page 48, The Facebook Files).
Returning to the Murthy v. Missouri case, in July 2023, Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a preliminary injunction blocking several federal agencies from communicating with social media companies to suppress content except for illegal activity. The 155-page ruling described a massive campaign of censorship and called it “Orwellian.” The Fifth Circuit largely affirmed the injunction in September 2023 but narrowed it slightly.
However, on June 26, 2024, a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling, the Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and vacated the injunction. The Court held that plaintiffs lacked standing, as they failed to prove a direct causal link between government pressure and specific platform actions that harmed them. The decision did not address the merits of whether coercion violated the First Amendment. The dissent, written by Justice Alito and joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, argued that the government’s pressure was unprecedented and created a coercive environment that chilled speech.
The ruling effectively ended the case without a merits decision on censorship or coercion.
This insidious form of government censorship was not isolated to the US; it was repeated across the Atlantic. In the UK, the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch published a damning report based on whistleblower accounts and FOIA disclosures entitled, “Ministry of Truth: The Secretive Government Units Spying on Your Speech” in January 2023.
It exposed five secretive Whitehall units: the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), Rapid Response Unit (RRU), 77th Brigade (a specialist unit of the British Army focused on information warfare), Government Information Cell, and Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), all involved in monitoring, flagging, and suppressing online speech under the guise of countering disinformation, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
These units secretly surveyed UK citizens and labeled lawful political dissent, policy criticism, and mainstream media scrutiny as “misinformation” or “vaccine hesitancy,” including tweets from MPs. According to the report: “David Davis, the senior Conservative backbench MP and former Brexit Secretary, was mentioned in RRU analyses on multiple occasions, providing further evidence that even elected MPs were not outside the scope of the unit’s monitoring.
A weekly vaccine hesitancy report from July 2021 featured a tweet from Mr. Davis from June 30th of the same year which celebrated the government’s decision to scrap mandatory Covid-19 certificates for large events. The MP argued that the passports were aimed at solving a ‘non-existent problem of poor vaccine take-up.’ It was still circulated in a ‘vaccine hesitancy report,’ although Mr. Davis made no reference to the vaccine’s efficacy. Mr. Davis also appeared in a second report from 25th August 2021 after he tweeted a Telegraph article covering findings suggesting that although Covid-19 vaccination had been very successful in cutting hospitalization and death, it may have had little impact on transmission of the Delta variant of the virus.”
The report went on to flag how dissenting academics were also under the watchful eyes of these clandestine units. In September 2020, Oxford Professor Carl Heneghan penned a Spectator article questioning the evidence base for the UK’s “Rule of 6” social gathering limit during Covid-19, arguing it lacked scientific justification for balancing infection risks against social-distancing harms and calling for evidence-based policies to minimize overall harm. The government’s Rapid Response Unit (RRU) flagged the piece for officials after noticing lockdown critics sharing it on social media.
The Big Brother Watch report stated: “As this report has demonstrated, the growing existence of censorship and surveillance units should concern anyone who believes in the importance of rights, freedoms and also following due process, something that is integral to maintaining liberal democracy.
Through bodies such as the CDU, RICU and the RRU, the Government is using unaccountable teams of civil servants to extra-judicially censor lawful expression online. Not only is this a violation of the right to freedom of expression but as evidence in this report has shown, in order to perform these censorship functions, the units in question also have to engage in significant levels of surveillance.”
The report also called for the immediate shutting down of the CDU and RRU, prohibiting AI mass censorship, banning state propaganda via fronts, and repealing Online Safety Bill elements that enable similar censorship.
At the time of this book’s publication, only one of these “truth units” has been disbanded: the Rapid Response Unit (RRU). The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) was rebranded in late 2023 to the National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT). It now operates under the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The rest remain intact.
This level of involvement, particularly the use of the military, in domestic speech monitoring underscores how far governments went to suppress key dissenting voices under the pretext of “safety.”
3/11 Viral Takeover is available now in Kindle (ebook), paperback, or hardcover editions from Amazon worldwide.
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