Moderna’s "disinfo department" monitors 150 million websites for "anti-vaccine" narratives

Moderna’s “disinformation department” partnered with an industry-backed non-profit, the Public Good Projects (PGP), to monitor and suppress dissenting voices on COVID-19 vaccine policy, according to a new report by investigative journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson published Monday in UnHerd.

Over the last year, the “Twitter Files,” two lawsuits against the Biden administration and other investigations have exposed instances of collusion among government, social media and universities to suppress dissenting speech about COVID-19 policies, election fraud allegations and other topics.

This new report sheds light on Moderna’s behind-the-scenes strategy within this new media landscape. It exposes key actors and how they worked to monitor 150 million websites for the purpose of censoring speech that undermines the company’s COVID-19 vaccine narrative and actively shaping public discourse to benefit Moderna’s bottom line...

Its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine transformed the drugmaker into a $100 billion company almost overnight and turned its CEO, chairman, and co-founders into billionaires.

Today, as public interest in taking yet another booster shot tanks and federal subsidies for the shot are disappearing, so are profits, leading the company to invest in new strategies – like a flashy marketing campaign – to stay afloat, Fang and Poulson reported.

Moderna also is doubling down on work started during the pandemic to attack dissent about vaccines and to direct vaccination policy, they found...

In fact, Moderna today employs former law enforcement agents, like Nikki Rutman, a 20-year FBI veteran who worked for the agency in Boston during Operation Warp Speed where her job was to conduct weekly cybersecurity meetings with Moderna.

Now she runs Moderna’s global intelligence division – part of the department spearheading Moderna’s work to stop “disinformation” – producing reports that flag “anti-vaccine narratives” online and recommending whether and how to address them, they wrote.

The department works with the PGP, largely funded through a $1.27 million donation from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a biotech lobbying group that represents Pfizer and Moderna.

Through PGP and Talkwalker, a “social listening” company, Moderna’s team monitors everything from mainstream news outlets to gaming sites, deploying artificial intelligence to monitor 150 million websites across the world for vaccine-related conversation.

The team issues reports to Moderna staff that color-code the “anti-vaccine narratives” by level of risk. Low-risk narratives “don’t currently warrant any action.” For the higher-risk narratives, the team “will notify the appropriate stakeholders with recommendations,” Lee and Poulson wrote.

Analyzing sample reports, the journalists discovered that examples of “high-risk” posts included a video posted by Elon Musk mocking myriad claims that the vaccines were “100% effective” along with a number of posts made by comedian and political commentator Russell Brand, whom they flagged in September for his “anti-vaccine” beliefs.

The Moderna team also raised concerns over the optics when tennis star Novak Djokovic, who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, won the Moderna-sponsored U.S. Open...

Twitter’s general counsel also advised the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s task force on combating misinformation to work with PGP on COVID-19 speech-related issues.

Lee and Poulson also found that PGP distributed talking points and advice on how to respond to vaccine misinformation to a network of 45,000 healthcare professionals.