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About two weeks ago (July 13) the Attorney General of Missouri Eric Schmitt announced on his Twitter account that a federal court in the United States accepted a joint lawsuit filed by him and the Attorney General of Louisiana "for discovery & documents from top ranking Biden officials & social media companies to get to the bottom of their collusion to suppress & censor free speech".

"No one has had the chance to look under the hood before", wrote Schmidt (not to be confused with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who will appear later in the article) – "Now we do." 

According to the lawsuit, filed on May 5, Biden, Senior officials in his administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and  Jennifer Psaki, and government organizations, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIAID (headed by Dr. Fauci), and the CDC, the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, "have colluded with and/or coerced social media companies (Twitter, Meta, and YouTube) to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling their content 'disinformation', 'misinformation', and 'malinformation.' Plaintiff states allege the suppression of disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content constitutes government action and therefore violated Plaintiff states' freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution". Among the topics it is claimed that Biden and members of his administration cooperated with the social media companies - the story of Hunter Biden's laptop, the US elections, the effectiveness of masks, and the issue of the origin of the Covid-19 virus. For example, in October 2020, after publishing an article about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, the main Twitter account of the New York Post was locked, and Twitter blocked other users from sharing the link.

 

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According to the lawsuit, filed on May 5, Biden, Senior officials in his administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and  Jennifer Psaki, and government organizations, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIAID (headed by Dr. Fauci), and the CDC, the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, "have colluded with and/or coerced social media companies (Twitter, Meta, and YouTube) to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling their content 'disinformation', 'misinformation', and 'malinformation.' 

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The lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana comes after two years of increasingly extreme censorship by social media platforms. As the examples presented in the lawsuit teach, no person or organization that "steps out of the lines" drawn by the narrative is immune from it including senior politicians, and even scientists, doctors and leading academic and medical organizations and journals. One of the extreme examples is the case of " Facebook versus the BMJ".

On 3 November Howard Kaplan, an Israeli citizen posted a link to a BMJ investigation article in a private Facebook group. The investigation reported on alleged falsification of the data and flawed research methods occurring at Ventavia, a contract research company helping to carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial, which led to the approval of the vaccine by the FDA.

The investigation was based on documents, data and evidence revealed by Brooke Jackson, the whistleblower who worked at Ventavia and is now suing Pfizer for fraud and falsifying the data in the study. The article brought bmj.com record traffic and went viral on Twitter, achieving the second-highest Altmetric score of all time across all biomedical publications. However, a week after posting the link, Kaplan received a message from Facebook, according to which, there is "Missing context in a post that you shared... Independent fact-checkers reviewed the information and said that it was missing context and could mislead people". The administrators of the private group where the post was published also received a warning message, against a "partially false" post. "The Facebook Thought Police has issued me a dire warning", Kaplan wrote in a new post. "Facebook’s ‘independent fact-checker doesn’t like the wording of the article by the BMJ. And if I don’t delete my post, they are threatening to make my posts less visible. Obviously, I will not delete my post . . . If it seems like I’ve disappeared for a while, you’ll know why".

Kaplan was not the only Facebook user having this problem. Soon, several other BMJ readers who shared the post were alerting on Facebook’s censorship. Some reported that they could not share the investigation, and many others reported that their post was flagged with the same warning that Kaplan received and that they were warned that continuing to post the link would result in their posts not being exposed.

The BMJ editors fired back. This is one of the leading medical journals in the world, and censorship on an article in such a leading journal is unprecedented. Fiona Godley, the former editor-in-chief of the journal, and Kamran Abbasi, the current editor-in-chief, wrote an open letter to Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg, in which they raised "serious concerns about the 'fact checking' being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook/Meta". The BMJ launched their own investigation into Facebook's "fact-checking" process and revealed that Facebook and YouTube actually rely on a partnership with the International Fact-Checking Network - an organization that has crowned itself as the one that approves other fact-checking companies/groups. The organization, according to the BMJ's investigation, is run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school, two of whose top donors are... Facebook and Google.

As mentioned, this serious affair is not an isolated case, as countless Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other social media users have experienced firsthand in the past two years. In fact, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, it seems that Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are taking a new and aggressive approach towards any information that contradicts the institutional narrative dictated by the World Health Organization.

The proactive censorship is based on a process that social media companies call "fact-checking". On Facebook, for example, as revealed by the BMJ, anonymous "fact checkers" remove content that, according to the companies claim, "violates community standards" and spreads "medical disinformation." This, despite the fact that in many cases these are users who shared links or screenshots of scientific articles, or even of data from official sources such as the CDC and the FDA. The "disobedient" users who publish content defined as such are "punished", when Facebook's algorithm reduces exposure to their content. They can also often find themselves suspended from the platform, either temporarily or permanently.

In Google, the situation is similar. Attempts to search for materials on the origin of the coronavirus, the use of anti-COVID-19 drugs such as ivermectin, or the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines yields one-sided results, usually, the first of which is from pages of fact-checkers, which seemingly refute the claims that contradict the dictated narrative. For example, articles seemingly refuting claims that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, that there are life-saving drugs for the disease, or that there are safety problems associated with the COVID-19 vaccines.

As early as April 2020, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Google's video platform, announced that YouTube would remove any content that contradicts the WHO's position on the subject of COVID-19. This statement was strictly applied to YouTube's terms of use, according to which any information that contradicts the position of the World Health Organization constitutes a violation of the community terms, including any advertising that opposes lockdowns, masks, COVID-19 vaccines or tests, or one that supports medications such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin (which are even listed in the community standards).

Although censorship began to gain momentum right from the start of the COVID-19 crisis, with the launch of COVID-19 vaccines at the end of 2020, it seems that there has been a clear step up. An investigation by an organization called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit organization reportedly based in Britain and Washington, found that only 12 individuals, online influencers, including Robert Kennedy Jr., Rashid Buttar and Dr. Mercola, posted 65 % of the content against COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In a document published by the organization, it called these 12 influencers "the disinformation dozen". Following the publication, their accounts were removed.

The business model of Google and Facebook is similar: the platforms find relevant content for users for free, and the revenue comes from publishing personal information. The name of the game is Engagement - involvement of the users on the platform. The more active the users, the more the algorithm learns them and the more successful the ads are. This is exactly the reason why Google and Facebook have advocated over the years for an open Internet, without censorship. The more interesting the contents were, the more exposure they received, regardless of the opinions expressed in them. In other words, the conduct of Facebook and Google since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis is odd, to say the least, as it is contrary to the companies business model.

How can this be explained? In an article on the "Facebook versus the BMJ" case published in the BMJ, Abbasi said: “We should all be very worried that Facebook, a multibillion-dollar company, is effectively censoring fully fact-checked journalism that is raising legitimate concerns about the conduct of clinical trials… why is Facebook acting in this way? What is driving its worldview? Is it ideology? Is it commercial interests? Is it incompetence? Users should be worried that, despite presenting itself as a neutral social media platform, Facebook is trying to control how people think under the guise of ‘fact-checking.’”

So what is really behind this aggressive censorship policy? Is it possible that Google and Facebook genuinely believe that any criticism of the COVID-19 policy could pose a clear and immediate danger to public health? And if not - are senior politicians and various government organizations putting pressure on the companies and imposing censorship on them, or are there other motives behind this cooperation?

One of the explanations presented is that the motivation of the companies to censor is their fear of regulation. This, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which it was revealed that Facebook sold information about its users in a way that tilted the election system in the United States, and the harsh criticism of the collection of information and the violation of user privacy that was voiced. It is possible that this fear motivated the companies to act in this way, since it was clear to them that in the event that someone is harmed or a health risk is caused to people as a result of spreading unprofessional opinions, there will be politicians who will pounce on the issue and impose supervision and regulation on what is allowed and not allowed to be published. Therefore, they prefer self-regulation.

But can this motive explain such tight, intense and aggressive repression and censorship? Another explanation pointed to by BMJ editor Dr. Abbasi, is commercial interests. But what could be the commercial interests of Internet companies in such aggressive censorship of their users, and apparently, contrary to their business model? Is it possible that entities with economic interests in the pandemic paid the internet platforms to advance their agenda? It turns out that the answer is even more surprising - the internet companies have been involved up to their necks in such interests since the outbreak of the crisis. In fact, according to the information accumulating, they are involved in a tangled web of economic and political interests together with organizations and policymakers, whose enormous conflicts of interest have already been exposed.

The theory of the Wuhan lab - and the connection to Google

Since the declaration of the coronavirus as a pandemic, the WHO and the US Department of Health have strongly denied any claim that the origin of the coronavirus is genetic engineering in the

But little by little significant documents and evidence were revealed and accumulated, indicating that the theory is definitely possible. One of the most important discoveries revealed in this context is that the Sars-Cov-2 virus contains a genetic sequence that corresponds inversely - like a key to a lock - to a sequence called "MSH3" in a Moderna company's patent filed in 2016. The discovery, published in February of this year in an article in Frontiers in Virology, According to many researchers, it is the smoking gun that clearly proves not only that the Sars-Cov-2 virus originated from a lab, but also the connection between the virus and the company's patent. Moreover, the person listed as the main author of the patent is Moderna's CEO Stephan Benkel himself, who a few days after the study was published admitted in an interview with FOX Business that the SARS-Cov-2 virus may have been created and engineered in a laboratory in China. Moderna's vaccine received direct funding from the American Ministry of Defense DARPA, from BARDA, the Biological Warfare Institute at the NIA, and also from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Following these revelations, the organization is now forced, more than two years after the announcement of the pandemic, to retract its rigid position, and in what was defined as a sharp reversal of its position – to admit that the claims according to which the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory may certainly be true, and announce the opening of an investigation on the subject.

Meanwhile, the heavy interests of leading policymakers such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the NIAID, and of senior researchers in the United States such as Dr. Ralph Barick, a veteran infectious disease researcher at the University of Northern California, and Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization, began to be revealed.

Barrick and Daszak were involved up to their necks in intensive joint research activities with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and with China's "bat woman" Dr. Shi Zhengli, head of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the WIV. The WIV, which was established as early as 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is currently the largest virus bank in Asia, and according to its website, it stores more than 1,500 different virus strains.  Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it opened in 2015 China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) virology laboratory. Together with Shi Zhengli, Barrick and Daszak conducted Gain-of-Function studies at the Wuhan laboratory. The (stated) goal of these studies, which were heavily criticized, was to produce infectious and lethal chimera viruses. Among other things, the researchers focused on Gain-of-function studies on the on SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin, in a way that reinforced the spike protein of the virus so that it binds more strongly to the ACE2 enzyme - the protein's receptor, which is found on the surface of the body's cells, in order to increase the ablility of the virus to penetrate the cells and infect the carrier.

Dr. Peter Daszak and his organization, Ecohealth Alliance,  have received approximately $39 million in funding from the NIAID since 2013, and was actually at the forefront of the scandal, when it became clear that they had been conducting research on bat viruses in the Wuhan laboratory together with Dr. Shi Zhengli for years, while receiving heavy American funding. Dr. Daszak even received indirect funding from Hunter Biden, through Metabiota, a company on which we will expand on later in the article. EcoHealth Alliance also served as a conduit of funds, transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers in the US from the Dr. Fauci's NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, for the purpose of the Gain-of-function studies. Absurdly, in 2021, Daszak was also a member of the WHO's investigative team to examine the Wuhan laboratory, and at the same time was one of the 27 experts who signed a letter published in The Lancet, which "disproved" the theory of the virus leaking from the laboratory and called it "Rumor", "Misinformation" and "Conspiracy Theory". However, an investigation published by the British Telegraph in September 2021 found that 26 of the 27 experts, including Daszac, had ties to the Wuhan laboratory, either as colleagues or as funders. Following the revelation, Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton was forced to admit that he had known full well for a long time that Dr. Peter Daszak had ties for many years with the Wuhan laboratory.

Dr. Ralph Barick, who was also a major partner in the Gain-of-Function studies performed by Shi Zhengli in Wuhan, received extensive funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Fauci, both directly and indirectly, through Ecohealth Alliance.

The director of Dr. Shi Zhengli, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), Dr. George Gao, is the one who conducted the studies in the Wuhan laboratory. In 2014, when during the Obama administration, federal funding for Gain-of-Function research in China was temporarily suspended, it was Dr. Gao who instructed Dr. Xi to continue her research until the funding was renewed in the Trump era. Dr. Gao was one of the officials who declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.

The revelations about the involvement of the NIH in the dangerous gain-of-function studies in Wuhan, including Fauci's email correspondence from the first days of the pandemic that were revealed, triggered a flood of accusations against him in the United States, and led to the opening of investigations on the subject in the Senate and Congress. About a year ago, the Senate held a hearing that dealt with the United States government's treatment of COVID-19. In this framework, Republican Senator Paul Rand, a physician by profession, questioned Dr. Fauci about his involvement in the funding of research in Wuhan, and even directly accused him of funding a joint study conducted by Dr. Barick together with Dr. Shi Zhengli, in which they enhanced the SARS virus to infect human respiratory cells. Fauci insistently claimed that he had never funded such research in China. "The NIH has never funded and is not currently funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology," he stated. However, documents revealed by the Intercept in September 2021, including the NIAID grant proposal report for the EcoHealth organization led by Daszak, clearly indicate the funding of these studies. Following these revelations, many in the United States are calling for Fauci's dismissal and prosecution.

And what does all this have to do with internet companies? It turns out that the relationship between Google, its parent company Alphabet and Facebook (or in its new name Meta) to the corona crisis is much more complicated and deep than one would expect from Internet companies. Astonishingly, in June 2021 it was revealed that Google itself had funded Dr. Daszak's research for over a decade. Google's philanthropic foundation, called Google.org, was the one that supported these studies on bat viruses. In fact, it turns out that there are studies as early as 2010 in which it was noted that they received funding directly from Google, although the extent of the funding was not disclosed. Thus, in a 2010 study on bat viruses, authored by Daszak himself, as well as the vice president of the EcoHealth Alliance, Jonathan Epstein, they state that they received research funding from the Google.org Foundation.

In another study from 2014, of which Daszak is one of the authors, it is stated that the study was supported by Google.org. And in a third study, published in 2018, which is authored by EcoHealth Alliance researchers including Peter Daszak, under the title "Serologic and behavioral risk survey of workers with wildlife contact in China", noted that the research was "made possible" by a financial contribution from Google.org.

The 14-page abstract summarizes: "We report on a study conducted in Guangdong Province, China, to characterize behaviors and perceptions associated with transmission of pathogens with pandemic potential in highly exposed human populations at the animal-human interface. A risk factor/exposure survey was administered to individuals with high levels of exposure to wildlife". The article appears to lay the foundation for the theory that SARS-like viruses may arise in a wet market in a district close to the city of Wuhan. It should be noted that these studies are not related to COVID-19 or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to the article in the Daily Mail that described the affair, Google issued a statement in response in which it claimed: "These are ludicrous and baseless conspiracy theories.The one-off philanthropic grants referenced are years old and had nothing to do with COVID. We have engaged precisely zero times with this organization on any work related to COVID or the Wuhan lab".

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In June 2021 it was revealed that Google itself had funded Dr. Daszak's research for over a decade. Google's philanthropic foundation, called Google.org, was the one that supported these studies on bat viruses. In fact, it turns out that there are studies as early as 2010 in which it was noted that they received funding directly from Google, although the extent of the funding was not disclosed.

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Invested in epidemics and collecting biometric information

And this was not Google's only investment in the field of epidemics. In 2008, Google gave about 14 million dollars to the Prevent and Predict programs of the US government, which were developed with the aim of detecting and responding to outbreaks of new pathogens around the world. One of the goals was to perform DNA sampling in animals to prevent the virus from jumping from animals to humans.

About a third of the grant, $5.5 million, was transferred to the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI) program. The program, which deals with the detection of new deadly pathogens around the world, including China, is led by Dr. Nathan Wolf, founder of the United States government's Metabiota program to provide diagnostic services for deadly diseases to organizations and companies. As mentioned, Hunter Biden invested in this company and Google also contributed about a million dollars to this venture. Wolff also serves on the research committee of DARPA, the R&D authority of the US Department of Defense, which financed the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines.

The same team that established the Prevent and Predict programs is also behind another venture, the 'Global Virome Project' - "A collaborative scientific initiative to discover zoonotic viral threats & stop future pandemics". The project, which was established in 2018 at a cost of approximately 1.2 billion dollars, deals with the genetic mapping of all zoonotic viruses in the world, first and foremost in China and Thailand. In this project as well, Dr. Peter Daszak is one of the founders, alongside Dr. George Gao, director of the Chinese Disease Center, and representatives from the pharmaceutical company Merck, from the WHO, from NIAID, from the Metabiota program , from the UN and more. The sources of the project's funding have never been revealed. In 2020, the project evolved into the Trinity Challenge, led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, the Clinton Foundation, and many other organizations. The goal is again to map viruses, locate outbreaks and manage the crises in a coordinated manner.

The person behind Dr. Daszak's funding is the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who after his retirement became a prominent venture capital investor and philanthropist who is particularly close to the plate. First, it turns out that at the beginning of 2021 a special committee - The Covid Commission Planning Group - was established for planning the COVID-19 response by Schmidt, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Skoll Foundation and the 'Stand Together' Foundation, in collaboration with John Hopkins University. Dr. Peter Daszak was initially one of the members of the committee, but withdrew from it after things got complicated. Daszak received additional funding from the Skoll Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant who previously headed Google.org, and from the 'Ending Pandemic' program of Rockefeller Foundation.

Schmidt, who is a well-known democrat and, together with his Google fellows Sergey Brin and Larry Page is also a member of the World Economic Forum, is one of the most prominent investors in the field of artificial intelligence in the world. He serves on the board of many AI companies and owns 20% of the investment firm DE Shaw, which has investments under management totaling $60 billion. He also serves on the board of the defense AI company Rebellion Defense, and invests in Abacus.ai, which produces managed artificial intelligence platforms, and in Sandbox AQ, which is a Google spin-off. On top of that, Schmidt also founded Civis Analytics, a company that helped implement artificial intelligence in Democratic Party campaigns, trained the big data team in Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and greatly assisted the election of Obama and Biden. He also serves as the president of the National Security Commission of Artificial Intelligence, where in cooperation with the intelligence services, he directs the government's course on artificial intelligence.

In addition to all these activities, Schmidt also served on the board of the Broad Institute, and in 2021 he donated 150 million dollars to the institute for the establishment of the 'Schmidt Center', in collaboration with MIT and Harvard, with pharmaceutical companies and technology companies such as Google and Microsoft, which will combine biological research and machine learning. The founder and former president of the institute is Eric Lander, Biden's science advisor, who is also behind the HARPA project - an organization equivalent to DARPA (the research and development organization of the American Health Organization), which Biden launched with a budget of 6.5 billion dollars, for the purpose of fighting bioterrorism. In collaboration with Verily, Alphabet's healthcare subsidiary, and with Microsoft, the Broad Institute established an open platform called Terra, to which Google and Microsoft were given access to all genomic codes uploaded by a network of 18,000 scientists. In fact, the companies get access to 168,000 healthcare organizations that collaborate with Microsoft around the world.

Eric Schmidt also helped a lot, together with Bill Gates, to the former mayor of New York, the Democrat Andrew Cuomo, who imposed heavy restrictions on New York during the COVID-19 period and was forced to resign after a particularly embarrassing sexual harassment case. Schmidt was appointed by Cuomo as the president of a committee tasked with introducing telemedicine services, distance learning and internet access during the pandemic. Cuomo described Eric Schmidt as "the greatest mind in the world of our time".

Another initiative of Schmidt and Gates is called Pandemic Action Network, a lobbying group that operates mainly in the Democratic districts of the United States and works with the Clintons. Among other things, the group promoted the wearing of masks in the early stage of the pandemic, under the hashtag #MaskingForAFriend. As part of the lobby, politicians and public figures, for example former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, were required to wear a mask to show a personal example.

But it turns out that epidemics are not the only area of ​​health that Google is interested and investing in. In 2007, Google invested $3.9 million in 23andMe, whose founder is the fiancée of Google's founder, Sergey Brin. The company provides a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service whose stated purpose is to help people understand their genetic makeup and hereditary traits. However, in 2013, Scientific American, one of the oldest scientific journals in the US, published an article that claimed that the 23andMe testing service is nothing less than " a front end for a massive information-gathering operation against an unwitting public". In other words, the journal accused the company of being a front organization for the activity of collecting genetic samples without the knowledge of the subjects. According to the article, a member of the company's board of directors even openly stated that the company's business model is not based on profit from the sale of the test kits, but on the collection of personal data for the purpose of using it. 23andMe's conduct even led to a serious friction with the FDA and a warning letter from the American Food and Drug Administration, when it became clear that the company also performs genetic tests to detect diseases contrary to procedures. In 2018, it was revealed that the Federal Trade Commission in the United States opened an investigation into the company, on the suspicion that it shares the sensitive genetic data of its customers with third parties. There have also been growing concerns regarding the security of personal DNA data. In January 2020, it was reported that the company had run into difficulties and sales of its DNA tests had plummeted.

What is the meaning of Google's great interest in virology and collecting biometric information? According to Wall Street analyst and journalist Charles Ortel, " An original goal of Google was to organise Earth’s information". "There are, and will always be many viruses, so one imagines that Google researchers might be curious to catalogue these and ultimately track their course through the world population. If Google were on a power trip, and as new viruses hit, the company might be able to shape the allocation of resources fighting viruses towards perceived allies and away from foes". The use of such data can also have a political dimension. In 2009, Hillary Clinton, who served at the time as US Secretary of State, requested that US diplomats collect "biometric information" such as DNA from foreign heads of state and UN officials. Either way, the fact that a private multinational corporation has control over a vast amount of sensitive biological information, with little or no oversight from government and public regulators, raises concerns about how that data will be handled and what will happen if it falls into the wrong hands.

Zuckerberg: Wants to control the epidemic narrative on the web

Among Dr. Fauci's emails that were revealed following a court order, a particularly interesting email correspondence between Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, was discovered. It turns out that in March 2020, Zuckerberg contacted Fauci, thanked him for his response to the pandemic and informed him that very soon he intends to launch a "coronavirus information center" to help him "get his message out". At the end of the correspondence is a blacked-out section, which Fauci's assistant, Courtney Billet, referred to as "an even bigger deal" than just an information center. Fauci replied: " I will write to or call Mark and tell him that I am interested in doing this". In another email, Zuckerberg also suggested sending "data reports" to "facilitate decisions" about lockdowns. In addition, he wrote: " I want to make sure you have all the resources you need to expedite the development of a vaccine". About a year ago, Senator Marsha Blackburn challenged Dr. Fauci regarding this correspondence and the redacted passage, claiming that he collaborated with Zuckerberg and Facebook in creating the pandemic narrative. In an interview with MSNBC on June 9, 2021, Fauci vigorously denied, and claimed: "I don’t have a clue of what she just said, I don’t have a clue of what she’s talking about. I have no idea what she’s talking about… I have no idea what she’s talking about". However, Facebook did begin a massive censorship process shortly after this email correspondence, blocking and censoring posts that did not align with the narrative, including criticism and accusations against Fauci and towards the Chinese Communist Party for conducting Gain-of-Function experiments. Recently, they were forced to uncensor this issue, in light of the evidence and momentum that the lab virus leak theory is gaining.

 As mentioned, Facebook's fact-checkers are actually paid companies, many of which are sponsored under the organization 'International Fact-Checking Network', which is managed by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which is funded, among others, by Facebook and Google. One of these companies is Lead Stories - the company that performed the "fact check" in the Broock Jackson affair that was exposed by the BMJ. According to the article published in BMJ following the affair, Lead Stories is one of the ten companies with which Facebook contracted in the United States. The company, whose motto is " debunking fake news as it happens", is engaged in promoting content of the Democratic Party and has promoted contents supporting Obama and Clinton. An analysis of the "fact checks" on Facebook found that it was responsible for half of all the fact-checks on Facebook during the year 2021. However, it turns out that already last December Facebook had to admit that what they call "fact checks" are in fact only "opinions". The admission was made in response to a lawsuit filed by journalist John Stossel, which referred to videos on climate change, labeled by Facebook's 'fact checkers' as "fake". By the way, another prominent "fact checker" site, FactCheck.org, is supported by the Annenberg Foundation, which is funded by the Bill Gates Foundation.

So how are Zuckerberg and Facebook related to the story of the pandemic? The connections, it turns out, are branched and complex almost like Facebook's algorithm. In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan joined Bill Gates' commitment to donate most of their wealth to philanthropy. Like Gates, the two established the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation and transferred 99% of their Facebook shares to it (controlling rights over these shares remained with Zuckerberg). Most of the fund's activity, which is one of the most sponsored funds in the world, focuses on the fields of education and developing countries, and not in the field of biotechnology. But in 2016, the foundation announced an investment of 3 billion dollars within a decade in a program aimed at eradicating diseases and promoting health services. One of the projects financed by the foundation is the Human Cell Atlas, a platform for collecting and processing biological information. The goal of the project, in which 2,300 scientists from around the world participate, is to create a genetic map of all the cells of the human body. Under this initiative, which works in collaboration with the Broad Institute database, dozens of articles on the subject of the coronavirus have been published over the past two years. At the end of 2018, about a year prior to the COIVD-19 outbreak, the foundation, in cooperation with the Gates Foundation, developed open code for the global detection of infectious diseases. It is a cloud technology called IDseq for genetic investigation of infectious viruses.

The foundation also invested $600 million in a new research center called Biohub, which was established for the purpose of creating a scientific collaboration between the Universities of California, San Francisco and Stanford, with the aim of building new tools for understanding and treating diseases. The current president of Biohub is Prof. Joe Drisi, who identified the SARS virus and was awarded the Genius Award in 2004. Despite the tax exemption, as befits a philanthropic association, Biohub retains all the patents resulting from the research. At the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, Biohub established the COVID-19 Task Force, with the aim of increasing the diagnostic capabilities of COVID-19. A few months later, in July 2020, the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation awarded Dr. Ralph Barick a $433,000 grant, with which Barick's laboratory purchased advanced robotic equipment for RNA sequencing. Barick, who at the time led the team that developed the remdesivir drug for the treatment of COVID patients, did not reveal the fact that he was also the one who performed the Gain-of-function studies on the coronavirus in Wuhan.

In 2021, the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation announced an additional $3.4 billion investment in artificial intelligence, image processing and technologies in the world of biotech. Of these, one billion dollars was aimed for Biohub, another billion for investing in the establishment and development of a global network of similar research centers, and $500 million for Harvard University, for the purpose of establishing a center for artificial intelligence. The foundation also donated 25 million dollars to the accelerator (acceleration program for start-ups) of the foundation of Bill and Melinda Gates for the treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the foundation donated 25 million dollars to support journalists, and another 75 million dollars to advertise Facebook during the epidemic.

Involvement in the management of the pandemic, connections and interests

So what stands behind the increasing censorship and suppression? Why do the information technology companies work so intensively to silence critical voices, contrary to their own policy until recently? Do they truly believe that by doing so they are saving humanity? Is it their solution to avoid external regulation? Maybe, but the information presented above points to direct and indirect involvement in the management of the pandemic, and to complicated connections and enormous economic and political interests, which can provide at least two other possible explanations. One is the fear of being held directly responsible for the outbreak of the pandemic - Google and Facebook, through Schmidt and Zuckerberg, invested in research carried out in Wuhan, so if the COVID-19 lab leak theory is correct, it is absolutely clear that these companies have no interest in their part in the affair being revealed.

The second explanation is related to the economic and political interests inherent in promoting the pandemic. The ability and mechanisms for collecting information during a pandemic in which Google and Facebook have invested billions are a money-making machine. Profits can also come as a result of accumulating political capital thanks to Google and Facebook's close relationship with the regulator, and especially the Democratic Party. These giant companies, perceived prior to the pandemic era as predatory global monopolies, have been the target of a serious attack by politicians in recent years, and now they suddenly have political backing. Google and Facebook are both members of the World Economic Forum and are among the opinion leaders on the subject, so it is not surprising that they promote the WHO's agenda when it comes to the pandemic. Both companies have established a long series of associations and organizations with their billionaire friends in the Silicon Valley, with the aim of influencing how the pandemic is managed. At the same time, Google and Facebook are also among the main beneficiaries of aggressive policies during a pandemic, such as lockdowns and the closure of schools. As we have already come to know, during lockdowns, and when the schools are closed, the use of the Internet soars, and with it the use of social networks and search engines. Pandemics certainly benefit them. And if all this is not enough, these companies also gain prestige thanks to their activities, when their senior officials enjoy jobs and are funded to head committees and boards of directors of government organizations and huge associations, and so in an endless loop, earn more money and more opportunities for profits.