CDC Met With Big Tech Officials in Bid to Tackle COVID-19 Misinformation, Emails Show

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) met with executives from Big Tech companies in an effort to cut down on narratives deemed by officials as COVID-19 misinformation, according to newly released emails.

The CDC hosted meetings on May 14 and May 28 in 2021, with slides outlining what the government agency described as false or misleading narratives about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines, according to the emails, which were obtained by America First Legal.

“We would like to establish COVID BOLO meetings on misinformation and invite all platforms to join the meetings. We are aiming for our first one on Friday at noon,” Carol Crawford, a CDC official, wrote to executives at Google, Twitter, and Facebook before the first meeting.

BOLO stands for “Be on the Lookout,” she noted.

At least one of the narratives deemed misinformation was later proven to be accurate—namely, that COVID-19 vaccines affect male fertility.

Others included the vaccines causing people to become magnetic, that vaccinated people can cause issues for people near them, and that vaccinated people were developing blood clots when they traveled by airplane.

In one message to Todd O’Boyle, a senior manager of public policy at Twitter, Crawford sent a list of specific posts discussing some of the rumors.

“Todd, we wanted to point out two issues that we are seeing a great deal of misinfo about—vaccine shedding and microchips. The below are just some example posts,” Crawford wrote.

Boyle had written to Crawford in April, telling her that his team “has asked for examples of problematic content so we can examine so we can examine trends,” adding that “all examples of misinformation are helpful.”

Crawford later reached out to Twitter to alert the company that the CDC was working with the U.S. Census Bureau “to leverage their infrastructure to identify and monitor

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases