Man, it would be great if tech CEOs would maybe not appear as guests for podcasts during which they smoke blunts or engage in casual conversation with anti-vaxxers. And yet here we are.
In a move that unsurprisingly resulted in Jack Dorsey getting ratioed to hell, the Twitter CEO on Tuesday evening thanked Ben Greenfield—a fitness podcaster and apparent “human body and brain performance coach” — for their discussion on a forthcoming episode of the latter’s show. “Grateful for you,” Dorsey said of Greenfield in a tweet to his 4 million followers. It didn’t take long before his mentions were just a string of people pointing out that Greenfield promotes anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. Not great, Jack!
Why are you giving a platform on your platform to someone who undermines @snopes & spreads misinformation about vaccines, one of the greatest public health successes in human history? https://t.co/5Mi4qQD2tk pic.twitter.com/Cbs54pnVWc
— Alex Howard (@digiphile) March 13, 2019
Responding to Dorsey’s Tuesday tweet, Alex Howard surfaced a tweet from Greenfield last month in which he claims that vaccines “cause autism” and that fact-checking website Snopes shouldn’t be trusted “for your news on this matter or any other alternative health news.” Greenfield’s also discussed vaccines on his podcast a number of times, including one episode in which his guest advocated against the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
So what’s the deal? Is Dorsey a low-key anti-vaxxer or what? A spokesperson for Twitter told HuffPost’s Andy Campbell that its CEO didn’t know about Greenfield’s anti-vaccination views prior to going on the podcast. But according to HuffPost’s Alana Horowitz Satlin, Twitter’s spokesperson wouldn’t answer questions about whether Dorsey thinks there’s a link between vaccines and autism. Given that there is no scientific evidence to support this claim, it kind of seems like that should have been a relatively easy question to answer.
Greenfield tweeted Tuesday that during their conversation, he and Dorsey discussed “advanced stress mitigation tactics, extreme time-saving workouts, DIY cold tubs, hormesis, one-meal-a-day and more.” They did not, he said in a follow-up tweet on Wednesday, discuss vaccines. This apparently “epic” exchange will rear its head on March 23.
Hold on to your butts, I guess.