French YouTuber ‘offered cash to spread Covid-19 vaccine disinformation’

The firm did not want the videos to be branded nor did they reveal the name of the client behind the project.

Paris: A YouTube blogger, Leo Grasset from France, has claimed that a UK-based PR company offered him money to spread Covid-19 vaccine disinformation to his 1.17 million subscribers.

Grasset, who goes by the name “DirtyBiology” online, shared e-mails with Euronews that show a proposition from someone claiming to work for a UK-based PR company.

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They refer to an opportunity regarding an “informational campaign” and ask the blogger to push false claims either on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram that the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine is three times more lethal than the AstraZeneca one, reported Euronews.

The company also wanted him to question why the European Union and governments were buying the Pfizer vaccine in large quantities and told him to discourage people from believing mainstream media.

The firm did not want the videos to be branded nor did they reveal the name of the client behind the project.

Grasset, who plans to get his Covid-19 vaccine as soon as he is eligible, told Euronews, “One of the main points of this campaign was to act as if I was discovering something myself that the media would not cover… because there is this huge plot.”

“There is no regulation whatsoever, there is no institution that watches what we (influencers) are doing… so I hope this will shed some light on the problem,” Grasset told Euronews. “We (influencers) have a responsibility, we have audiences we can manipulate — like it or not,” he added.