1. Do you have an example of someone who has been deplatformed (kicked off Youtube, Twitter, etc) for simply saying that COVID came from a lab outbreak? Because I'm pretty sure they also had some strong opinions on other topics and/or engaged in online harassment.
2. Do you have any evidence that they we "deamplified" as a conscious decision by employees of the platform? Or did their opinions expressed simply lose them following and/or not generate their normal engagement?
If their deamplification was a conscious decision by employees of the platform - how is that not also an expression of free speech by those employees and/or the platform? Should private companies not be allowed to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit?
If the deamplification was a result of them losing following and/or not generating normal engagement - what do you expect to happen here? People can express any opinion they want, but people are also completely free to not listen or engage.
Here is an example of person who got deplatformed from Twitter because they expressed virus came from a lab. There are numerous such examples which did not had news articles published for them.
So a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong posted a self-published, non-peer reviewed paper, which was subsequently shown to not be supported by the underlying data cited. She also fled Hong Kong after publishing that paper.
This sound a lot less like she was deplatformed from Twitter by Twitter employees, and a lot more like Twitter was given a legal order from the Chinese government to deplatform her. Which is a very different conversation than employees of social media companies suspending someone because of their personal beliefs.
Despite her being suspended from Twitter, "Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic" [0]
She also proceeded to appear on the most viewed national evening news segment multiple times as well as dozens of podcasts and live streams.
So I don't really see how going from having a Twitter account to being a national conservative hero as a whistle-blower is really feeling any negative reproductions from her speech. In fact, her speech seemed to make a name for herself and win her a lot of positive publicity.
2. Do you have any evidence that they we "deamplified" as a conscious decision by employees of the platform? Or did their opinions expressed simply lose them following and/or not generate their normal engagement?
If their deamplification was a conscious decision by employees of the platform - how is that not also an expression of free speech by those employees and/or the platform? Should private companies not be allowed to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit?
If the deamplification was a result of them losing following and/or not generating normal engagement - what do you expect to happen here? People can express any opinion they want, but people are also completely free to not listen or engage.