Other instructions were that influencers should say “that mainstream media ignores this theme” and should ask why governments are purchasing Pfizer.

A trainee doctor in southern France with tens of thousands of followers who was also approached for the smear effort told French broadcaster BFMTV that he was offered more than 2,000 euros ($3,000) for a 30-second video post.

Grasset said that given the large size of his YouTube following, he possibly might have earned tens of thousands of euros (dollars) had he agreed to take part.

Instead, he wrote back that “I can’t work for a client that won’t give its name and who asks me to hide the partnership.”

“Too many red flags,” Grasset said in an interview with AP. “I decided not to do it.”

“They wanted me to talk about the Pfizer vaccine in a way that would be detrimental to the Pfizer vaccine reputation,” he said.

He said the disinformation effort drives home the need for people “to be super, super cautious” about what they see online.

“We creators on YouTube, on internet, Instagram, et cetera, we are at the center of something going on like an information war,” he said. “We, as creators, need to set our standards really high because it’s, I think, just the beginning.”

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Originally Appeared Here