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Writer's pictureEditor Darren Birks

UK Government Made Payments to Social Media 'Influencers' to Say Covid Vaccines Were Safe


The UK Government went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the public during Covid. There were more government departments dealing with propaganda and censorship than there were dealing with Health.


It is now public knowledge that the UK Government indulged in mass-censorship of the public if they were critical of the government, and that the same government weaponized fear to gain compliance but now it has emerged the they also 'collaborated with Tiktok, Youtube, and Instagram 'influencers' to push 'the message' on vaccines.


THE RAPID RESPONSE UNIT (RRU), which was part of the Cabinet Office, Supported Whitehall departments with communications and propaganda: Originally formed in 2018 the RRU was one of several secret government units that were turned over to the area of social media monitoring and manipulation. The department was reportedly set up to support “the reclaiming of a fact-based public debate”


However, in March 2020 the government retasked the unit to “crack down” and “combat false and misleading narratives” about coronavirus by issuing “a direct rebuttal on social media”.

The RRU brief morphed into deploying social media content to “rebut and rebalance” the narrative. In the early days of their new remit hey targeted criticism of lockdown modelling, and then the national and local lockdowns that followed.


But now it has been revealed that the government department also secretly made payments to internet 'influencers' to tell their fans that Covid Vaccines were 'safe and effective'.


The revelation was made by Big Brother Watch who obtained secret files that documented the payments made. However, the government are refusing to release the names of those it paid to spout their covid propaganda.

This unit was created by the Conservative government to promote "fact-based public debate". But our report revealed it spent its time monitoring MPs opposed to vaccine passports like veteran Conservative MP, David Davis, and politicians who criticised a lack of support for businesses like Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham.


The unit even monitored academics who questioned the modelling used to justify the November 2020 lockdown such as Oxford University Professor Carl Heneghan. Columnist for the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens, also appeared in two government counter disinformation reports.


The idea of working with influencers suggests that the Cabinet Office encourages more advanced communication teams to disseminate information more subtly or in ways that are not obviously connected to the government. However, when Big Brother Watch asked for copies of any payments made to influencers the Cabinet Office refused to tell us, claiming these would be managed by the companies contracted to deal with social media outreach, so it would be too expensive to find out which influencers are paid.


One influencer who we know has worked with the government is Jake Sweet, who has 11 million TikTok followers, as he admitted to a Channel 4 documentary that he had worked with the government but did not specify the department or topic.


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