This Woman Secretly Runs One of the World's Biggest Anti-Vax Websites From Her House

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
David Gilbert
@daithaigilbert
OpenVAERS is a website that is presenting unverified federal data about vaccine deaths as fact.

It's become wildly popular in anti-vaxxer communities.

Now, thanks to research from @LogicallyAI, we can exclusively reveal who's running it

This Woman Secretly Runs One of the World's Biggest Anti-Vax Websites From Her House
By presenting unverified data as fact, OpenVAERS has become one of the most powerful tools in the anti-vaxxer community.
vice.com
7:08 AM · Aug 12, 2021

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8mm3/this-woman-secretly-runs-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-anti-vax-websites-from-her-house

An anti-vaxxer website which scrapes and misrepresents data from a government-run database has been spreading misinformation like wildfire through anti-vax communities for the last month. Now for the first time, the identity of the woman running the site has been revealed.

OpenVAERS, a site set up in early 2021 to spread vaccine misinformation by misusing federal data, is being operated by Liz Willner, 55, who lives in the wealthy enclave of Piedmont, a community completely surrounded by Oakland, California, according to new research conducted by AI-powered misinformation tracking group Logically, and shared exclusively with VICE News.

Willner, who did not respond to VICE News’ repeated efforts to contact her by phone, email and social media, admitted this week to Logically researchers that she was operating the site, though claimed she was one of a team of people behind it.

By presenting unverified data as fact, OpenVAERS has become one of the most powerful tools in the anti-vaxxer community. For example, the site on Thursday declared that over 12,000 people had died as a result of taking a COVID-19 vaccine. While that many deaths may have been reported to VAERS, the figure is completely unverified and proves no connection between the vaccine and the subsequent fatalities.

*snip*

[UpInArms]

1. The face of evil

Hopefully, she will find out firsthand what a bad case of Covid owes.

[TheBlackAdder]

13. What are the odds that she and her family are fully vaccinated? I bet she sterilizes everything too.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. Secret, no more.

[Upthevibe]

3. Nevilledog.....

Thank you for posting......

[wryter2000]

4. Shit, she lives here?

No, I don't live in Piedmont, but I live in Oakland. I hope her neighbors have a nice talk with her.

[msfiddlestix]

46. My daughter lives in Fruitvale, but she has friends in Piedmont

gonna send this ditty to her, just in case her friends happen to know her....... etc,


These people bare a huge responsibility in the resurgence of this pandemic, imo,

[wryter2000]

49. She's killing people

I have friends in Piedmont, too. One's a doctor. I'm sure she'd have a few choice words for this person.

[msfiddlestix]

50. Right?!!!!!

I just now shared the Vice News article with her... with links.


these privileged freaks are killers.

[NoMoreRepugs]

5. Hope she's squirming a bit now that she has been outed.

Slimy piece of dung.

[cojoel]

6. I am curious as to who is paying for it

I think figuring that out would go a long way in stopping it.

[modrepub]

7. If She's Generating That Much Traffic

it's probably self supporting. What's truly evil is if this person is making money off of churning this disinformation.

[progressoid]

27. 1.23 million visitors to its site in 6 months.

That's a lot of ad revenue.

[rockfordfile]

8. she should be arrested

"By presenting unverified data as fact" with regards to vaccinations during a world pandemic. By doing that gets people killed.

[Dan]

11. Arrested - sure; Charged with ?; and

Sued out of existence.

[DanieRains]

9. Sue Her Into Oblivion If You Lost An Unvaccinated Loved One

The only thing you can do.

[Zeitghost]

55. That an option

If you want to add being broke to being heartbroken.

[Cryptoad]

10. what is her street address?

[lindysalsagal]

12. OK so, go pick her up, find out that she's vaxxed, where the money is, and

make her plea deal require her to make video commercials admitting the scam and recommending vaxes. Just effing DO IT!!!!!

[Tree Lady]

17. Doesn't surprise me there are some in northern CA

Who don't believe in vaccines, in natural supplements that type of thing. I believe in mind body but not to the point I don't trust doctors and real medicine.

[Jerry2144]

14. Does she have

Any exposure to possible successful liability lawsuits? If her disinformation leads to a severe infection, can she be successfully sued? I know being a piece of excrement is not grounds to sue.

[TexasBushwhacker]

15. They are "influencers" who add conspiracy theories

to their websites and social media accounts have at to generate hits.

[SergeStorms]

32. Imagine my surprise....

when I researched what an "influencer" actually was, that they could make tons of money for doing it, and that people actually believe these "influencers'" bullshit without question.

Another wonderful offshoot of "social media", which may very well lead to the total downfall of society as we once knew it. 😡

[SpaceForceGeneral]

16. Does anybody have a link

that describes the technology used to to locate this person? Seems like it could be interesting reading.

EDIT: Found it, in case anybody else is interested.
https://www.logically.ai/articles/california-woman-anti-vax-site-openvaers

[gopiscrap]

53. welcome to DU

[groundloop]

18. I hope everyone is careful and sends the well deserved hatred to the correct Liz Willner

A quick search shows that there are several people with that name, I'd sure not want the wrong person to get any of the wrath the anti-vaxxer Liz Willner deserves.

[turbinetree]

19. So how much money is she making off this shit....

[dalton99a]

20. Lizabeth Pearl Willner has a lot of blood on her hands

[snowybirdie]

21. OK, so where's

her address and phone number? We'd all like to know.

[egduj]

58. Why do you want to know her address?

[snowybirdie]

59. Should have

Added the sarcasm tag. Sorry for that.

[IronLionZion]

22. What's the motive for spreading this disinformation?

it seems absurdly malicious

[Martin68]

23. She looks like such a nice young woman. The banality of evil.

[shanti]

33. She's 55, not so young

and plenty old enough to know better. Shame on her.

[druidity33]

41. you see the flag on the second pic?

Unfortunately it's a dead giveaway for Authoritarian/Fundie/whatever you want to call that 23% of our populace.

[Grins]

24. "...set up in early 2021 to spread vaccine misinformation"?

"...set up in early 2021 to spread vaccine misinformation"?

After Trump took credit for it? After he got vaccinated with it? After he demanded credit for it? After he demanded Biden publicly THANK HIM for it?

Understanding Republicans is a real hard kick to the nuts.

[panader0]

25. AntiFA--meh.... but antiVA--those people are very dangerous.

[niyad]

26. May she receive everything she deserves.

[Rebl2]

29. Agreed

[KS Toronado]

28. Went to her website & she's got a disclaimer........

VAERS data available to the public include only the initial report data to VAERS. Updated data which contains data
from medical records and corrections reported during follow up are used by the government for analysis. However,
for numerous reasons including data consistency, these amended data are not available to the public.

So in other words, here's all the times someone complained to Barney Fife that a crime was being committed,
but no information on how many times he found an actual crook.

[SergeStorms]

35. This is listed as a .gov website.

Is that legal? If she's not connected with the federal government and portrays that she is, can she be prosecuted?

She (they) certainly make the site look very official and legitimate.

If she's spreading total disinformation, why can't the site be attacked and blown to cyber smithereens?

[KS Toronado]

42. It's listed as https://www.openvaers.com/

Believe the official website is www.cdc.gov which has a VAERS link.
If I had some cyber smithereens bullets, I'd use them on her site.

[ancianita]

43. She takes her data from a .gov site but hers is a .com. Here's more info from Media Bias/Fact Check

It's a good fact check site, according to Wikipedia, so I use it.

MB/FC don't know who funds her, either, but imo, if law enforcement can't show probable cause for harm done beyond 1A spewing of misinformation, it's hard to say that she's legally liable.
One reason I'd love for her site to get brought down by DDoS.

from MB/FC:

Funded by / Ownership

Ownership is not disclosed on the website; however, on the FAQ page, they state, “OpenVAERS is a project developed by a small team of people with vaccine injuries or have children with vaccine injuries. We do not accept donations or solicit fees. There is zero monetization of this site.” ...

Bias

While the website does not alter information obtained from VAERS, they publish numbers on Covid-19 that may be misleading as these stats are not vetted and most likely are not accurate. For example, they list Covid Vaccine Deaths as over 11K as of today. They also list over 1000 miscarriages and close to 5000 heart attacks. This data may have been entered into VAERS, but there is zero evidence to support the validity of these claims.

The OpenVAERS website also features a blog that holds a right-leaning bias that promotes vaccine hesitation. For example, in this article OpenVAERS Call to Action written by the anonymous “The Arkivist,” they state, “The mainstream narrative completely fell apart this week. In spite of an aggressive propaganda campaign by the Biden White House, it is now clear that coronavirus “vaccines” do not stop infection, transmission, nor hospitalizations and deaths in the vaccinated.” Further, in this blog post, they take the literal VAERS numbers to promote misinformation such as this “these shots have produced four times more fatalities than the terrorist attacks on 9/11.” At this point, there is little evidence anyone has died as a direct result of the vaccine...

Overall, we rate OpenVAERS Right Biased based on editorial positions that advocate for conservative vaccine hesitancy. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting based on taking unvetted data from VAERS literally and promoting misleading information based on the data. (D. Van Zandt 8/3/2021)

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/openvaers-bias/

[SergeStorms]

44. Wow! Thanks.

And thanks for the mediabiasfactcheck.org address. Another tool for the old tool belt that I wasn't aware of. Thank you!

DU is such a great wealth of information. TRUTHFUL information.

[ancianita]

45. YW, Serge!

I had to check them out because my unvaxxed daughter quoted VAERS months ago. VAERS has been around since 1990, but this opportunist ferreted out its input weirdness and decided to run with that in Jan of this year.

She's adjacent to the crazy billionaires of Miami, David and Leila Centner, who push the same anti-vaccine BS.
They were Trump's guests at the Ellipse, are friends of the famous anti-vaxxser, RFK, Jr..
They are heavy donors to Gov. DeSenseless.
They run a Miami school that called covid a hoax and penalized teachers for wearing masks.
Leila started the online conspiracy that merely being around other vaccinated people can cause reproductive problems in women.

I'm not claiming they fund her, but they're definitely in a mis/disinfo network of funders of crazy.

[SergeStorms]

48. Republicans, all.

And republicans who don't care how many people die in order to further their nefarious goals. It's wealth, power, or both. That's all they care about.

Pro- life my ass!

Thanks again, ancianita.

[jmbar2]

30. Follow the money...

Antivaxxer influencers making $1.1 BILLION/year off their sites

https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/social-media-profit-pandemic-antivax/

[dalton99a]

31. +1. Median home price in Piedmont CA: $2.3M

[SergeStorms]

38. And we find Facebook and Instagram....

the two largest "social media" giants (oh, I forgot the twits at Twitter) making tons of money for these "social media" darlings.

I wish someone would blow "social media" entirely off the map. They will lead to the downfall of society, because no one knows what the fuck the truth is anymore.

[Mustellus]

34. OVER 2 MILLION MURRICANS HAVE DIED.....

if 150 million Americans have taken the vaccine in a year, and we all live our Biblical Threescore and Ten (70 years), then

2 MILLION AMERICANS WHO GOT VACCINATED HAVE DIED.

Now... out of those 2 million... how many were due to the vaccine?

[bearssoapbox]

36. Look closely at her face& eyes.

Maybe, like other mass murderers and some serial killers she gets off on killing people.

[ZonkerHarris]

37. find and follow her money to see who is behind her.

[SergeStorms]

39. We are.

Or should I say, those who follow her on mother-fucking "social media" are responsible.
Of course this wouldn't be possible without the owners of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. who, I may add, are making shitloads of money from this piece of shit to begin with.

[YoshidaYui]

40. Baka yaro

It’s Japanese, look it up if you wish, its not good.

[Mary in S. Carolina]

47. I think I know her address and phone number

Can I put on this link, I am afraid that I may be wrong, put I am pretty confident I am correct. Can I give it to someone and they check it out?

[Skittles]

51. don't do that

you don't know what would happen, there is a lot of anger out there

[Brother Buzz]

56. That, and it's strictly prohibited in the pesky TOS

Don't post anyone's private or personal information

Don't post private or personal information about any person (including public figures) even if that information is available elsewhere on the Internet.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=termsofservice

[Skittles]

57. good

it should be, it is wrong....a form of vigilantism

[Demovictory9]

52. wow...

[Sympthsical]

54. Piedmont, Oakland. Yeah, this is my surprised face

We've had a problem with anti-vaxxers in the Bay Area for a long, long time.

So this doesn't surprise me even remotely.

I would not assume her politics, however. A lot of anti-vaxxers in the Bay Area are wealthy, white, liberal Democrats - a lot of this shit came out of Marin. The people who bring you awesome things like crystals and homeopathy. She could be a Trumper, but it's really not a given with that location.

If you want to know how much fun they are, especially within local school districts, read a copy of the play Eureka Day. It was written before Covid. Affluent parents making school boards' jobs a total nightmare. (Thanks, Jenny McCarthy!) It got so bad, the state passed Senate Bill 277 which eliminated personal belief exemptions for school vaccination requirements. I remember, about ten or so years ago, San Jose was having a hell of a time with these people.

Tired of these people. I had to deal with them constantly in my old job. Now they're everywhere.