Vaccine Manufacturer Is Reprimanded For Online Censorship Attempts

In a stern measure that has been widely hailed by free speech advocates, the German Council for Public Relations, a standards-setting body, has officially reprimanded BioNTech, a partner of Pfizer, for attempting to silence critics on X.

As reported by Lee Fang, BioNTech’s attempted censorship was aimed at activists who have been critical of the pharmaceutical industry’s reluctance to share intellectual property rights, thus hindering the production of generic, low-cost COVID-19 vaccines. The company reached out to Twitter executives back in 2020, seeking to suppress these voices.

Through extensive reporting, including analysis of emails from Twitter’s archives, it was revealed that BioNTech was closely working with Nina Morschhaeuser, a Twitter lobbyist in Berlin, to monitor and possibly “hide” comments from those demanding a special waiver of World Trade Organization rules that govern intellectual property and patent rights.

Twitter’s management, rather than resisting these overtures, contemplated ways to quash the pharmaceutical critics by flagging posts as violations of the company’s terms of service.