Stanford professor revealed to be blacklisted by Twitter for opposing COVID lockdowns says it's like McCarthyism

A Stanford professor says he was blacklisted by Twitter for opposing the COVID-19 lockdowns because some thought his ideas were too dangerous.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appeared on the Ricochet podcast with conservative host James Lileks on Friday to discuss his inability to be verified on Twitter since it was revealed last week that the social media giant shadowbanned him to prevent his ideas from spreading.

Bhattacharya is a tenured professor at Stanford, who previously co-authored a letter in 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration, which declared the lockdowns were damaging.

‘It turns out James that I’m on a blacklist which I thought the United States kind of put behind us in like the 1950s but I guess that’s the modern way now,’ Bhattacharya said. ‘What happens with this kind of mechanism of social control is to tell the world that this idea is too dangerous to discuss. This person is too dangerous to think about.’

The Stanford professor joined Twitter in 2021, a year after he wrote the controversial letter.

After appearing on various news channels to share his views on the pandemic and ramping up a following of about 290,000, it appeared as if the social media giant didn’t want to give him the blue checkmark.

‘I had some success, but I applied three times to become verified and they turned me down,’ Bhattacharya said.

Journalist Bari Weiss confirmed on Thursday that the professor was on Twitter’s blacklist, along with other public figures that questioned the severity of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

At the time, Specialist teams were put to work dealing with 200 cases a day.

Conservative commentators, including Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, were also deliberately put on a ‘search blacklist’ in Bongino’s case or tabbed ‘do not amplify,’ in the case of Kirk

‘It’s basically a social credit system, right? It’s a system designed to… tell people look I’m bad [and] I have dangerous ideas, don’t listen to me,’ Bhattacharya continued. ‘I think that’s really the purpose of something like that like it’s not possible for the internet to squelch ideas if they happen.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11526187/Stanford-professor-revealed-blacklisted-Twitter-opposing-COVID-lockdowns.html

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