https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/02/covid-19-counter-disinformation-policy-forum-censorship/ Project fear or censorship? How secretive units tackling Covid disinformation ‘strayed towards censorship’ The Counter-Disinformation Unit is accused of mission creep by ordering removal of posts that go against government opinions ByInvestigations team2 June 2023 • 9:00pm please log in to view this image It was a drizzly January day and Britain was still in lockdown when the meeting was brought to order. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) had assembled 21 men and women, with the purpose – the chairman explained – of “addressing the threat posed by Covid-19 mis- and disinformation”. It was already a “priority” and would remain one as the Covid-19 vaccination programme rolled out across Britain, she explained, “given the clear risk posed by anti-vaccination narratives”. The vaccination programme had just begun and the Government was relying on it to bring the country out of lockdown. Those present at the meeting included senior executives working for Google, Facebook and Twitter, as well as the BBC and Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator. There were also half a dozen academics and representatives of fact checking organisations and lobby groups such as Full Fact and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Together they formed the “Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum”. Civil servants provided an update on how the national vaccine rollout was being received. There was “further work to do with decreasing vaccine hesitancy amongst black and minority ethnic communities”, and the Government’s last-minute decision to change the interval between doses was “starting to become an area for worries”. This information is recorded in a memo of the meeting, obtained by the Big Brother Watch campaign group under freedom of information laws, and passed to this newspaper. It is also clear from the disclosure at least some were wary that their efforts to tackle misinformation should not tip over into censorship. There should be an “emphasis on importance of freedom of expression”, the document states, and on “transparency”. Delegates were clear that there should be “support and scope for greater efforts towards transparency and publicity”. Advertisement Somewhat ironically, about a third of the six-page disclosure is so heavily redacted, it comprises pages of black. A section marked “Key points” is entirely blacked out. So are the names of the individual attendees, other than three civil servants. We know that they included Loughborough University’s Andrew Chadwick and Will Moy, the then chief executive of Full Fact – but only because of statements they have made elsewhere. At the Policy Forum’s next meeting, in March 2021, ethical principles were no longer the forum’s priority. Another memo says the DCMS proposed prioritising other topics for the remaining Policy Forum sessions. When shown the heavily redacted text by the Telegraph, Mr Moy was aghast. On behalf of Full Fact, he said: “We do not believe that it was necessary or helpful to black out the notes of the meetings in this way. “We recognise that not all of the work defending against these threats can be public but the government can and should be more open.” Advertisement There weren’t many more meetings of the Policy Forum. The group, which despite the claims of transparency with the public kept a low profile, was wrapped up in June 2021 after a mere six months. Mission creep and content removal But according to parliamentary disclosures, the Government had other measures in place to tackle the problem of disinformation. Chief among them was the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), a secretive organisation run out of the DCMS, and led by the “executive director of Government communications” Alex Aiken. The CDU started life in 2019 when its job was to tackle “disinformation” – that is, information that is intentionally and deliberately misleading – related to the European and general elections. It was “stood up” for the third time in March 2020 as it became clear that the virus that had spread quickly in Wuhan was threatening to do the same in the UK. Its remit was expanded to include “identifying and responding to harmful misinformation relating to Covid-19” – that is, false information that is “inadvertently spread”, according to Caroline Dinenage, the former digital minister. It was the first example of mission creep, but others would follow. Advertisement What the unit meant by “responding” was varied. In some cases it involved an online rebuttal. But in others, the DCMS used its position with the social media companies as what it called a “trusted flagger” to fast-track a request for content to be removed. Ms Dinenage told a committee of MPs in 2020 that “where potentially harmful content is identified”, the CDU will “flag that content to the platform to ensure it can be swiftly reviewed and acted on”. She added that the Government does not “mandate the removal of any content”. But it is arguable that the mere fact that the requests come from a ministerial office put pressure on the social media companies to heed them. Even Meta’s own “oversight board” – an independent group that reviews moderation decisions on Facebook and Instagram – acknowledges that there is a lack of transparency around government requests for action. The CDU and social media firms Remarkably little is known about the CDU’s activities beyond its function. It has not revealed how many removal requests it has made. Meanwhile, the DCMS has refused to disclose how many staff the unit has, or how much money is spent on it. However, emails obtained by Big Brother Watch show that they are frequently in touch with social media giants. Advertisement A Twitter executive told Matt Hancock’s special adviser in March 2020: “We’re also speaking regularly with the DCMS disinformation unit.” Leaked WhatsApp messages show that over the months that followed, the health secretary discussed the problem of anti-vaccine misinformation with Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister who was then vice-president of global affairs at Meta, Facebook’s owner. In November 2020, Mr Hancock wrote to Sir Nick in America, mid-way through a “roundtable” meeting that the Government was holding with UK executives from Facebook and other technology companies. “I’m just on a Zoom about tackling anti-vax with [Culture Secretary] Oliver Dowden – obviously vital,” he wrote. “Your team have been working really well with the department and the advertising ban is great – but we need to have a timeframe for removal of antivax material and how do [sic] to demonetise.” Sir Nick promised: “I’ll look into this.” A month later he sent Mr Hancock another direct message: “Matt – we’re announcing further changes today (basically we’ll now remove false claims – debunked by public health experts – made about authorised/licences vaccines).” Advertisement ‘Trusted flagger’ In the background, the CDU was working alongside the Cabinet Office’s now defunct Rapid Response Unit, which monitored social media and tracked the way information was being shared online in order that it could make rebuttals if needed. That unit also had so-called “trusted flagger” powers with tech companies and requested the removal of six posts on social media sites in April 2020. It is not clear which platforms they were, but all the posts disappeared, whether they were removed by the platform or the people who posted them. The specific details of what was taken down have only been made public in one example. The Government requested urgent attention on a Facebook post purporting to come from a Randox delivery driver dropping off boxes of Covid tests to NHS hospitals. The driver posted a picture of boxes of the test kits and their delivery schedule in an update only visible to his friends. Somehow the Government saw it and told Facebook “we would like this removed urgently”. In the end, the person who posted it deleted the account before Facebook was required to take action. Advertisement Although this particular example may have been of little consequence, critics of the Government’s covert monitoring activities are concerned about a bigger issue at stake. And it is one that looms larger when considering the kinds of content these little-known units are monitoring. AI firms trawling internet Government contracts suggest that much of the CDU’s work is carried out with the help of artificial intelligence firms, scraping the internet for statements that may count as mis- or disinformation. The DCMS spent £114,000 with a firm called Disinformation Index at the start of the pandemic and has a contract worth more than £1.2million with Logically, a firm headquartered in Yorkshire, which claims to use AI to “uncover and address” misinformation and disinformation online. Publicly available contract information suggests that the CDU’s monitoring programme continued until at least April 2023, and that it included helping to “build a comprehensive picture of potentially harmful misinformation and disinformation”. Comprehensive is an apt word. Logically’s literature boasts that it “ingests material from over 300,000 media sources and all public posts on major social media platforms”. Documents obtained under data laws paint a disturbing picture of the kinds of material that it has monitored for the Government’s CDU. Advertisement In regular reports entitled “Covid-19 Mis/Disinformation Platform Terms of Service”, Logically scooped up posts by respected scientists questioning lockdown or arguing against the mass vaccination of children against Covid-19. They also logged comments made by Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, on Talk TV at the end of 2021, objecting to vaccine passports and branding proposals as “a vision of checkpoint Britain”. Other reports received by the CDU logged information about the Conservative MP David Davis, noting him as “highly critical of the Government, with the majority of comments criticising Imperial College and blaming [redacted] personally for lockdown”. The disclosure does not link to his specific comment, but it came five days after Mr Davis had co-written a piece for the Telegraph criticising the Imperial College London scientist Neil Ferguson’s modelling. These examples are quite removed from the original aim set out by the Policy Forum on that drizzly January day: to address the “threat posed by Covid-19 mis- and disinformation”. Advertisement According to Ms Carlo, there has been huge “mission creep”, and we have arrived at a situation where the Government is effectively policing opinions it disagrees with as “false” information. “Whilst everyone would expect the Government and tech giants to act against foreign hostile disinformation campaigns, we should be incredibly cautious about these powers being turned inwards to scan, suppress and censor the lawful speech of Brits for wrongthink, as is shockingly the case right now. “The very concept of ‘wrong information’ dictated by a central authority is open to abuse and should be considered far more critically, lest we mirror Chinese-style censorship.” A spokesman for Mr Hancock said the information was in the public domain and directed readers to buy a copy of his book. A BBC spokesperson said the broadcaster attended the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum in an observer-only capacity. 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If you want to kill a conspiracy, make sure all information that lead to the decisions made is publicly available and the decision makers made accountable for their actions, or inaction. Blacking out the text in that report is counterproductive. If you're tasked with making decisions, you should have the courage to stand by them, if you don't, you're the wrong person to make them.
Many of us said this at the time….. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/04/covid-19-lockdowns-less-effective-new-research-inquiry/ Painful lockdowns a global policy failure that must never be repeated Had people been presented with the right information they would have adjusted their behaviour accordingly, but we never trusted them to JONAS HERBYLARS JONUNG4 June 2023 • 10:25pm Lockdowns taught us many painful lessons. That economies cannot be shuttered for many months without consequence. That needless money printing will fuel inflation. That school closures will have a catastrophic effect on pupils’ education. But perhaps the most painful lesson is that lockdowns were far less effective than many people had been led to believe. Today we, along with Prof Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, are releasing new research which concludes lockdowns were a colossal global policy failure that should never be imposed again. Our systematic meta-analysis of Covid restrictions has found lockdowns saved what translates to an estimated 1,700 to 6,000 lives in England and Wales. By way of context, influenza inflections account for an annual burden of around 20,000 deaths in the two nations. We used two different approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdowns in Europe and the United States in the spring of 2020. Our results indicate that lockdowns prevented approximately 3.2 to 10.7 per cent (6,000 to 23,000 Covid-19 deaths in Europe and 4,000 to 16,000 deaths in the US). These results are based on all relevant research studies and are robust when accounting for potential biases. They are further supported by results from natural experiments and several existing reviews on the subject, strengthening their validity. Unrealistic assumptions Our findings sit in sharp contrast to two widely cited claims from Imperial College London. The first projection, made in March 2020, suggested intervention could save over 400,000 lives in the UK. This heavily relied on the assumptions made in the authors’ modelling exercise. The second claim, based on a before/after comparison in June 2020, suggested that lockdowns averted 3.1 million deaths across 11 countries. This conclusion, however, rested on the unrealistic assumption that lockdowns were the sole determinant of the observed reduction in transmission. The authors failed to account for the voluntary behavioural changes adopted by individuals, such as working remotely or cancelling private gatherings, which undoubtedly contributed to reducing transmission rates. Advertisement This last point is important. The choice was never between lockdown and “business as usual”. Had people been presented with the information and the risks, they would have adjusted their behaviour accordingly – yet in many countries they were never trusted to do so. Nonetheless, our meta-study unveils a series of substantial burdens that lockdowns imposed on society, from the economic to the political. A unique feature of many of these burdens is their delayed manifestation. A salient example can be found in the government support measures which were designed to bolster aggregate demand. These measures gave rise to a surge in the quantity of money held by the public, which later caused record levels of inflation in many nations. School closures have widened attainment gaps, and will likely impact the most vulnerable children for many years to come. The unexpected rise in non-Covid deaths in certain countries serves as a potent reminder that the lockdowns may cause long-term detrimental effects on our collective health. Over 650,000 deaths were registered in the UK in 2022 – 9 per cent more than in 2019. Advertisement The Telegraph’s Lockdown Files offered a unique insight into how the Government handled the earlier stages of the pandemic. In many cases, it appears policy was formulated on the hoof, with little regard given to costs and benefits. This was not unique to the UK. Our research finds the costs were huge, the benefits minimal. Lockdown was a blunt policy tool that failed to serve its purpose. Yet as the serious mistakes of 2020 and 2021 begin to fade in the memory, there is a very real risk that this instrument will be used again in future. Our findings, including the relevance of voluntary behaviour, should serve as a critical focus point of the UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry. Otherwise, we risk being trapped in a cycle of repeating the costly errors we made during the pandemic. Advertisement Jonas Herby is a special adviser at the Centre for Political Studies in Copenhagen. Lars Jonung is professor emeritus at the Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies, Lund University
As soon as I saw this in the press I knew it would pop up here. It's such a nailed on unarguable piece of research that they haven't published it or had it peer reviewed. Fantastic.
"Listen to the experts, not randoms on the internet." "Not those experts!" Come on man, you've got to be able to see the humour in your own responses I really don't see the problem with the lockdown responses being examined and analysed and also if the vaccines have longer term health effects... Is this not normal? It seems strange to protest so much and demand silence and acceptance.
Well if they don't like those experts, there are others. Unfortunately they are saying pretty much the same thing. How about a member of the Scottish Government COVID-19 Advisory Group and Testing sub-group, Standing Committee on Pandemics and the SPI-M subgroup of SAGE? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14782715221088908 Just a couple of professors. https://iea.org.uk/publications/did-lockdowns-work-the-verdict-on-covid-restrictions/ How about the views of a group of scientists. https://reaction.life/lockdown-was-a-global-policy-failure-of-gigantic-proportions-new-study-finds/ Maybe the WHO? https://www.smh.com.au/national/lon...-says-who-envoy-on-covid-20220816-p5ba6t.html Experts from the BMJ perhaps? https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/uks-response-to-covid-19-too-little-too-late-too-flawed/ Just a professor who is one of theCountries leading epidemiologists, cited in The Guardian. https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/uks-response-to-covid-19-too-little-too-late-too-flawed/
I've got no problem with that either, but this isn't a scientific study, it's a report by the IEA which is a right wing lobby group that refuses to reveal its funding sources. It's based on a previous study by the same authors that has been widely criticised for shoddy science and statistical cherry-picking.
It's interesting to watch people trying to shoot the messengers, but ignoring others offering the same message. It'd be far more productive and informative if people offered a reasoned argument behind why they disagree with the point or issues raised, rather than just not liking the journal it's posted in.
There you go, someone's done it for me. https://www.theguardian.com/society...f-covid-lockdowns-leaves-unanswered-questions
If you read the article, I don't think it altogether says what you tried to claim, but in any event, have you found someone that's commented on all the other reports by other experts too? You do realise that you have confirmed that you personally haven't looked at any reports never mind understood the content and context, and are basing your opinion on not a lot of fact at all don't you?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...own-like-burning-home-destroy-wasps-nest.html I have come to the conclusion that it is really about whether people like being bossed about for their own good, or whether they do not. A surprising number of us turn out to love Big Brother. Not only could these illiberal types not get enough of doom-packed propaganda, decrees urging them to stay at home, keep their distance and wear masks, but they were sorry when it ended.
I suspect that there are some people that are uncomfortable to realise that the people they ridiculed for questioning the narrative could well have been making points that should have been addressed at the time, and we would all have benefited if they had been. It seems to bother them as there appear to be many in that group that prefer to devolve responsibility to others, rather than being responsible for their own acts and deeds. I hope the lesson for the future is that any potential for such draconian measures to be introduced again include a fully transparent decision making process, and people able to fully debate the issues. One of the biggest tragedies in all of this, is the consequences of the actions on those in care homes or with physical or mental conditions which were either missed or treatment delayed because of the poor decision making process. A full, frank and open inquiry should take place, but unfortunately I very much doubt that it will, as it is liable to bring 'expert' advice under the spotlight, and I don't think it will polish up well, but it is needed to rebuild the confidence that they themselves have helped damage. It all has a knock on affect on the other extreme measures that are being driven through with a similar lack of open conversation and ability to influence or input into the process.
How many lives were saved due to lockdowns is almost impossible to calculate, which is why opinions differ so much and why it's unlikely we'll ever really know. Everyone knew that there would be issues as a result of the lockdowns, whether they agreed with them at the time or not. I think everyone knew there would be negative physical and mental heath issues and a negative impact on businesses and the economy on the whole, it was an unavoidable consequence of shutting everything down. If there was another pandemic tomorrow, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be rushing into lockdowns, as even the most optimistic views of their effectiveness weren't really good enough to justify them.
The fact there are various values assigned to the lives saved (or otherwise) by lockdown, is in a large part due to the very poor modeling done at the start of the epidemic, where the limitations and failings were pointed out, but it was still clung to. Another issues is the very poor quality of the data collected, which should be of concern as it is what underpinned decisions. I would say putting absolute values is difficult, but it's not as difficult to assess the overall general effectiveness and impact, and also to look at whether the many, many voices pointing out the downsides should have been listened to rather than for them to try to ridicule valid claims by masking it with twee phrases like 'deniers'. If there isn't a full and open inquiry, it has all the optics of a whitewash, and that will impact on a lot of existing initiatives that are suffering a similar pompous attitude, and also on future events where hard decisions need to be made. Ignoring the failings rather than learning from them is cowardice and madness.
OK, but let's reorder your list to make it easier. This is the IEA report that the Guardian article points out the flaws in. And the professors are economists not medically qualified experts. And again, this is an article about that same study discussed in the IEA report. The article describes it as 'research, co-authored by scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Lund University', the use of 'scientists' is an attempt to mislead about their qualifications, and they don't point out that both those universities have said they had nothing to do with this study and disassociated themselves from it. It's an opinion piece, not a study, from a year ago. He says we should look carefully at whether lockdown was the right approach, because he doubts that it was. I agree with the first bit, and those who believe the second bit will get an opportunity to make the case for it during the Covid inquiry. There will be other people taking the opposite view, as long as both sides are using science and not conspiracy theories then seems like a good thing. Do you mean the bit where he says 'lockdowns were an effective way for governments to buy time to prepare their health systems at the start of the pandemic'? The guy is arguing against long lockdowns, not lockdowns in general. Seems like some reasonable points, not sure why you think it would be something I'd want to ignore. Hilarious. Did you actually read it? They're not arguing against lockdowns, they're criticising the government for delaying implementation of lockdowns - “By the time the UK formally announced a lockdown with a huge package of economic support measures, almost two months of potential preparation and prevention time were squandered ...” That's the same BMJ article arguing against delaying lockdowns. You said all these articles were 'saying pretty much the same thing'. You could only believe that if you hadn't read them. Mind you, you were right with the last two examples, they were saying the same thing, since they were the same articles.
I'm here for fun and conversation rather than to preach or evanaglise, and you seem determined to stick to the opinion you've chosen rather than worked out from assessing the information for your self,so I'll leave you to it.
Compounded by the fact that the country where the pandemic started was (and still is) pathologically secretive about it. Data collected at the very start could have been used to create better models of what was likely to happen. After all, models without data are guesswork.
That's an entirely fair comment. It looks that populations with high numbers of sick (diabetes seemed to be a big factor), obese and elderly ppl suffered the most, irrespective of whatever restrictions were put in. The madness began with the media showing Chinese ppl collapsing and dying in the street from covid (?), to blaming pangolins and a few months later, park benches were roped off and exercise was rationed, whilst McDonalds stayed open.. and this is what is worth looking at to see if were necessary.
