A film entitled “Died Suddenly” premiered Monday on Twitter and, spoiler alert, it wasn’t a rom-com. But that doesn’t mean that the film didn’t have a whole lot of fiction, even though a website bearing the movie trailer claimed that the film will “present the truth about the greatest ongoing mass genocide in human history.” This website also asserted that “the global elite have broadcast their intentions to depopulate the world.” And take a wild guess as to what this film claimed that these elite have been using to do their genociding and depopulating the world thing. Nickelback music? Low rise jeans? No, Covid-19 vaccines.
Yes, welcome to yet another conspiracy theory about Covid-19 vaccines. Actually, this conspiracy theory isn’t completely new and has been sticking around for the past two years or so, kind of like gum on an Ugg boot. It’s been one of a salad bar of anti-vaxxer claims that have emerged since late 2020, ranging from Covid-19 vaccines turning people into gigantic magnets where keys can stick to their foreheads to Covid-19 vaccines causing completely healthy people to drop dead. The title of this film is kind of like the movie titles “Snakes on a Plane” and “Sausage Party” in that it captures the story that the film is trying to tell. “Died Suddenly” spends much of its hour and eight minute run time suggesting that many people have been dying suddenly after getting Covid-19 vaccines.
Note the word “suggesting” rather than “showing” or “proving.” While the film shows headlines and stories of people dying suddenly, it never really provides much concrete scientific evidence linking Covid-19 vaccines to all these sudden deaths. It essentially just says oh look at all these sudden deaths over the past couple years and, oh. people, in general, have been getting Covid-19 vaccines. Never mind the fact that people have been dying suddenly ever since, oh, the beginning of human existence. Never mind the fact that over a million people in the U.S. and over 6.6 million around the world have died from, you know, Covid-19, since early 2020. Never mind the fact that people have been dying suddenly since Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Georgia) was elected to Congress when the film doesn’t try to link these two sets of events.
Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.
Social media sites have long struggled with misleading information and content moderation.
“There’s always been misinformation on the platforms,” said Sarah Barry, a vaccine advocate. Social media companies “only respond when something gets reported on, but they’re not actually proactively watching these groups”, she said.
But the tools are now being used to create a false sense of validity in order to spread dangerous falsehoods, including about vaccines. And groups on other platforms, like Facebook, continue to circumvent moderation by making minor changes to their names and the terms they use to promote anti-vaccine agendas.
Verified accounts are frequently seen as reliable and trustworthy, and Twitter’s algorithm gives them a higher ranking in search results, replies and follow recommendations.
“There’s a sense of legitimacy that comes with it,” said Barry. “By verifying this anti-vaccine account, they’re kind of verifying all of the misinformation it shares … it makes people think, ‘Oh, well, this is a verified account. This must be true.’”
Before the change in leadership, Twitter was working to remove some accounts that spread anti-vaccine disinformation.Users have already tested the new system by impersonating leading brands, like the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, leading to sharp dips in the company’s stock price and a call to re-evaluate insulin prices.
The change in Twitter rules also means pay-to-play verified accounts may reach wider audiences – and, with large cuts on moderation, the accounts could continue spreading misleading and harmful information.
Other anti-vax advocates were already legitimized by social media platforms. Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the leading anti-vaccine propagandists, already had a verified account on Twitter before the new verification system, and international and regional chapters of his anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, are still active on Facebook.
Facebook groups that are shut down for vaccine misinformation quickly return, and users dodge bans simply by changing the words they use.
Facebook group admins, like Tiago Henrique Fernandes, reconstitute banned groups by using slightly different names, like DSN Official instead of Died Suddenly News, while keeping the same focus on anti-science messages.
Fernandes coaches members not to write certain words that will be picked up by moderators, he explained on a recent show produced by Children’s Health Defense.
Group members often refer to the vaccines as food – “cookie”, “peaches”, “cheeseburger” – or use purposeful misspellings, especially for purported side-effects like seizures (“see jures”) or cancer (“can sir”).
One phrase that is picking up steam in the anti-vax world is “died suddenly”, which may be used in official media reports to talk about any sudden death, making it harder to moderate automatically.
A Died Suddenly Twitter account, which was verified through the paid Twitter Blue program, plans to release a documentary on Monday that promotes vaccine misinformation.
In a trailer for the film, 12 people are shown fainting or seizing, with the implication that they died from vaccines. In fact, at least four of the people shown did not die, and there were no links to the vaccines in their fainting episodes.
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