A now-debunked talking point claims that 65% of all vaccine misinformation online could be traced back to just 12 individuals, pejoratively labeled the “Disinformation Dozen.” This figure was derived from a non-peer-reviewed report by the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)—a privately funded advocacy group with no formal scientific oversight or accountability.
The report named high-profile figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sayer Ji, and Dr. Joseph Mercola, asserting that their social media presence alone was responsible for the vast majority of dissenting views on vaccine policy. But numerous experts—including those in digital analytics, civil liberties law, and journalism ethics—have since challenged the methodology, calling it statistically implausible and ideologically motivated.
Despite its methodological flaws, the CCDH report was used to pressure tech platforms into unilaterally censoring accounts, with no due process and no appeals mechanism. This marks a textbook example of modern propaganda:
Scapegoating a symbolic minority to justify sweeping censorship.
Conflating dissent with harm without proving causality.
Circumventing constitutional standards by using foreign NGOs as narrative proxies.
The 1300-fold margin of error in the original estimate, as later revealed through independent analysis, shows just how detached from empirical rigor this campaign truly was. Yet its purpose was clear: to create a chilling effect—one that equates questioning with criminality and free speech with biological threat.
Learn more about the lawsuit to hold CCDH, Imran Ahmed, and the colluding parties accountable here:
Reputation as a Weapon: Breaking—Federal Civil Rights Suit Filed Against CCDH, U.S. Officials, and Tech Giants
They didn’t just come for my work. They came for the right of Americans to speak freely—to question, dissent, and stand apart.
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