Coronavirus: UV Light Causes Twitter/Youtube/New York Times to go after a publicly traded company.

Update: Twitter re-instated the account for AYTU Bioscience, but based on the CEO's tweets, Youtube hasn't done the same yet. Davey Alba also once again asked for an interview, which implies she had no reason to ask Youtube to remove the video.

Original Post:

Perhaps lost in all the discussion around President Trump's Thursday comment about looking into injecting disinfectant into our bodies was that in the same quote he also talked about ultraviolet being used on the body.

Zerohedge just a little while ago had a post about how Twitter suspended the account of AYTU Bioscience that is looking into this exact idea. Youtube also deleted the video this corporation had posted.

Now, admittedly, this company as of Friday close was a penny stock trading at $1.40 (who knows what will happen Monday morning) so the research they do probably doesn't have the best track record. Yet, it is interesting that a publicly traded company would get suspended from social media. The last time I looked, the company was still suspended from Twitter and their video was still off Youtube (though others had re-posted it).



It appears that the blame for this move by Twitter and Youtube is driven by a New York Times reporter named Davey Alba who tweeted the following at 3:45 p.m. (potentially PST) on April 24th. It does make it look like the problem with this company is that their research is being used by President Trump supporters as proof to backup what the President said.

I contacted YouTube about this video, which is being shared on tons of replies on Twitter & on Facebook, by people asserting that it backs up Trump's idea throwing it out there that UV rays kill coronavirus.

YouTube just said it removed it for violating its community guidelines. pic.twitter.com/gbs5Igq0yy

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) April 24, 2020

Interestingly, the journalist had reached out to the company's CEO as well as CedarsSinai executive director at 1:07 p.m.

Hi there, Josh and Mark. I'm a reporter at The New York Times, and would love to be able to chat about Healight if you have some time today. Hope we can email -- davey.alba@nytimes.com

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) April 24, 2020

The tweet by the company was posted at 6:43 p.m. on April 23rd. So maybe there was a bit of opportunism on what President Trump said earlier in the day. Yet, I found this tweet by the Executive Director at CedarsSinai that has a stamp of April 20th, which is way before President Trump mentioned UV light.

Pivot. Our team has spent the last 6 weeks, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week working on #COVID. We have developed a device to kill coronavirus with @MASTprogram @cedarssinai hoping to bring to humans in weeks with help of @SterlingMedDev and @BioscienceAytu. https://t.co/uUgOaTCTKD

— Mark Pimentel MD (@MarkPimentelMD) April 20, 2020

What exactly is going on here? The journalist reached out to the company and CedarsSinai's executive director at 1:07 p.m. Appears to get upset that Trump supporters are using the company's promo video (most likely aimed at investors) and so at 3:45 p.m. contacts Youtube about taking down the video. Did the journalist find out that this was bad research? Did the journalist just think that CedarsSinai and AYTU Bioscience was over-hyping something? From the latest tweets, the journalist does not state if she made a mistake or stands by her actions. That's just too bad that there is an apparent refusal to clarify the situation.