After an 11-month suspension that resulted in his being “permanently banned,” the independent journalist Alex Berenson has been allowed to rejoin Twitter.
He sued the social media site in federal court last December, saying that his first amendment rights had been violated.
In the case, Berenson demanded specific monetary damages for his August removal from Twitter as well as his reinstatement to the social media platform in the Northern California District Court.
“The parties have reached an amicable resolution.” I’ve been given my job back. Earlier this week, Berenson posted on his Substack page that Twitter has admitted that his remarks shouldn’t have caused his suspension at the time.
After receiving five strikes under its Covid-19 misinformation policy, Twitter banned me. Which meant that I had allegedly made “factual assertions” that were “clearly false or misleading” and “likely to have an adverse effect on public safety or cause serious injury.” The tweets “should not have resulted in my suspension,” as we now discover,’ he stated.
“But that’s all in the past! I’m now best buddies with the little bird,’ he jokes.
I eagerly anticipate that Insider, NBC News, and everyone else who gushed about my suspension in August 2021 will give my return and Twitter’s acknowledgement that it should not have banned me equal attention.
Because this has NEVER happened before, there are actually a lot more.
Berenson, 49, a former reporter for the New York Times and well-known opponent of many pandemic measures, was suspended due to a tweet in which he claimed that COVID vaccines do not stop COVID infection or transmission.
Berenson had previously referred to the epidemic as a justification for the government to overstep its legal and authoritative bounds.
He writes on his blog that because he has been sworn to secrecy, he is unable to describe what transpired behind the scenes to result in his reinstatement.
I’m sorry, but all I can say about the settlement is what is in the statement.
Berenson has stated that he will keep looking into what led to his initial ban, adding that he thinks political pressure might have been a factor.
The settlement does not put an end to my inquiry into possible government coercion that led to Twitter suspending my account.
I’ll have more to say about that subject soon. Last month, I made a commitment to readers, and I take those promises seriously,’ he continued.
The journalist wrote the exact identical tweet that got him banned when he came back to Twitter, believing that it would be accepted this time.
According to Mr. Berenson’s lawyers, his assertion that the COVID-19 vaccines do not “halt infection” or “transmission” of the disease is still valid today.
The lawsuit continues, “It is undeniable that vaccine recipients can catch and spread COVID-19,” citing statements made by Dr. Anthony Fauci in interviews that have been publicized.
Nevertheless, whether Berenson’s criticism of vaccines was objectively true or not was not central to the dispute.
According to the exhaustive 70-page complaint, Twitter is legally a “common carrier,” analogous to a railroad or a telegram, and is therefore compelled to offer service to all customers under California and federal law.
The complaint claimed that Twitter’s function in public discourse today is comparable to the telegraph’s in the nineteenth century.
Additionally, according to Berenson’s legal representatives, he has “a particularly credible argument that Twitter acted on behalf of the federal government in suppressing and excluding him from its platform.”
The complaint claimed that the company’s decision to block him from Twitter was a result of pressure from the government and that it happened just days after prominent figures, including President Joe Biden, called for a crackdown on pandemic misinformation on social media.
Among other accusations, the lawsuit alleged violations of the First Amendment, fraudulent advertising, and California common carrier law.
Berenson was still able to publish his commentary and reporting on the website Substack after Twitter banned him. Pandemia, a novel he also published, debuted on the bestsellers list.
It doesn’t stop infection, Berenson stated in the tweet that resulted in his suspension. or communication. Do not consider it a vaccine.
Think of it, at best, as a therapy with a constrained window of efficacy and a horrendous side effect profile that needs to be administered PRIOR TO ILLNESS.
When Berenson wrote an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal in 2020 and claimed the epidemic had ushered in “a new age of repression and suppression,” that is when he started his campaign against masks and vaccine mandates.
“Information is now more accessible than ever before.”
But due to the encouragement of digital behemoths and conventional media outlets, we are rapidly entering a new era of censorship and suppression, according to Berenson.
He wrote at the time, “As someone who’s been unfairly labeled as a coronavirus ‘denier.
“I have personally witnessed this issue.”
The contentious journalist and author also discussed his ongoing conflict with Amazon, which Berenson claims sought to censor his books on COVID-19 and the subsequent response.
He said, “Amazon has made two attempts to censor self-published books I’ve written about Covid-19 and the reaction to it since June.”
These pamphlets don’t include conspiracies, they say. I only believe that many initiatives to manage the coronavirus have been harmful, ineffective, and unsupported by science, like the scientists who signed the Great Barrington Declaration.
Before leaving the publication in 2010 to focus on a career as a full-time author and novelist, Berenson started writing for the New York Times in 1999, covering the pharmaceutical sector and financial crime.
The Atlantic called the Yale-educated author “the pandemic’s wrongest man” for his incorrect assessments of the virus.
He had first projected that the number of COVID-19-related deaths in the US wouldn’t exceed 500,000. The number of fatalities in the nation has already surpassed one million.
Prior to his ban, Berenson had a sizable social media following, with more than 340,000 followers. Since then, he has added another 50,000 supporters.
Last December, he posted on Substack to announce his case, writing, “Remember, guys – Don’t take the law into your own hands, you take ’em to court!”