Twitter has flagged senior advocate Prashant Bhushan's tweets questioning the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines as misleading. On Monday, Bhushan, known for his views against Covid-19 vaccines, tweeted that the “healthy young have hardly any chance of serious effects or dying due to covid”, and rather have “a higher chance of dying due to vaccines”.
The Supreme Court advocate had attached a news article about a case where a 45-year-old woman died 10 days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. "The healthy young have hardly any chance of serious effects or dying due to covid. They have a higher chance of dying due to vaccines. The covid recovered have much better natural immunity, than the vaccine gives them. Vaccines may even compromise their acquired natural immunity," he had tweeted.
Twitter tagged this tweet as “misleading” and added links on why “health officials consider Covid-19 vaccines safe for most people”.
In response to Twitter's action, Bhushan tweeted: "Apart from the vaccines being untested & having serious adverse effects, I am shocked by attempts to censor such contrarian views."
He further said it was "irresponsible to promote universal vaccination of experimental and untested vaccines especially to young and Covid recovered".
"I am not anti Vaccine per se. But I believe it is irresponsible to promote universal vaccination of experimental & untested vaccines esp to young & Covid recovered," he said in a series of tweets.
Later, in a detailed post, Bhushan explained his reason for vaccine skepticism. "I have been attacked by many for tweeting about my views on Covid vaccines. The piece below summarises my Vaccine skepticism & the reasons for this. Apart from the vaccines being untested & having serious adverse effects, I am shocked by attempts to censor such contrarian views."
I have been attacked by many for tweeting about my views on Covid vaccines. The piece below summarises my Vaccine skepticism & the reasons for this. Apart from the vaccines being untested & having serious adverse effects, I am shocked by attempts to censor such contrarian views pic.twitter.com/UktE7f7BPt
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) June 28, 2021
Twitter again flagged the content as misleading.
In response, Bhushan tweeted: "So Twitter flagged the tweet below where I have explained my reasons for being a Vaccine skeptic (with references) as 'misleading' & blocked my account for 12 hours. This shows what I have said about the Congruence of interests of Big Pharma & IT platforms to allow just 1 narrative."
The move by Twitter comes weeks after another similar high-profile labelling, as "manipulated" of tweets by BJP leaders like Sambit Patra who accused the opposition Congress of preparing and sharing a "toolkit" or strategy document to corner the government over its Covid lapses. The move had got Twitter into more troubles in India amid escalating tensions between the microblogging platform and the Centre.
Twitter has stepped up its policing of content on its platform since the attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters in January this year, going as far banning the former president from the social network.
