The problem with Covid censorship (a problem not limited to Facebook) was that Covid was an airborne virus, and the arbiters of allowable speech decided that the truth about Covid was "misinformation" that needed to be suppressed.
How many additional people died because the mitigations we put into place were targeted at a virus with a droplet based spread (like the flu) but not effective against a virus with an airborne spread (like the measles)?
Knowledgeable academics who argued that the costs of lockdowns in schools would far outweigh any possible benefit were suppressed by non-scientists.
All talk of vaccine side effects was labelled misinformation and suppressed, even when accompanied with legitimate and accepted studies.
Etc.
The only common thread between all the possible examples of censorship - from side effects to lockdown effectiveness to the lab-leak theory to the US role in funding GOF research at the WIV - seemed to be that unless you spoke the narrative of the day then you were dangerous to society. Fully unpacking the irony there would take a book.
Many books have been written about this kind of censorship, because suppressing conversation like this never leads anywhere good. It's an enduring and central theme of damn-near all the top dystopian fiction.
It was even here in HN a community of pretty normal people. Remember the discussions of Sweden’s approach to lockdowns? Any mention of it and you were shouted down and blood was surely going to run in the streets of Sweden by dawn the next day. I lost a lot of faith in the HN community then.
The pandemic and the compliance and the us vs. them mentality really opened by eyes. It’s how terrible things happen, people will just do what their told by some perceived authority no matter what.
I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored?
Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate, as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns and especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media.
The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously, but it wasn't censored. I remember several high profile articles on it.
> I'm going to need to see some evidence for this.
It's a google search away friend. I'll source one thing for you though, pick whatever you think is craziest.
> How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored?
How would I know?
Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft, Reddit, Apple, Pinterest, Spotify and Amazon, among many more, have admitted to removing content. Many of those cases were extremely high profile. Facebook removed and suppressed nearly 200 million posts [0], many of them true. Twitter censored scientists for saying true things that the Biden Admin didn't like, as documented in the Twitter Files (which were heavily smeared as a "nothingburger"). [1]
> Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate
It shouldn't have been. Aerosol scientists emphasized early on that respiratory activities like talking and breathing produce tiny droplets (aerosols) that can stay suspended in the air, potentially spreading the virus. This knowledge should have been applied sooner. Air purification in classrooms and nursing homes could have been a thing almost immediately, but even now it hasn't been seriously pursued. (Outside the top private schools anyway.)
> as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns
For all the debate, they still got rammed through pretty much everywhere. Since then, everything that many people had been saying came true, and now we have a generation of children that teachers are describing as "feral" with the most genuine concern.
Excess cancer deaths, widespread mental health crises, a huge transfer of wealth to the rich, economic hardship for many, a huge rise in domestic violence. The people who predicted this were smeared seven ways to Sunday, and you'd have to be in a strange bubble to have missed it. Perhaps the censorship worked after all?
> especially the potential side effects of the vaccines.
Again, this has been explicitly acknowledged as a topic which got heavily censored, by the companies that did the censoring no less. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc all did it, and all report being asked to remove things that "could be seen as" going against whatever position was du jour.
> Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media.
Some information moved a lot faster than other info... Because of acknowledged mass suppression and censorship.
There's no damn good reason that I and many others could take a glance through Daszak's paper and recognize it as bullshit immediately, but it took years to be acknowledged as such by media and academia.
It also took a long time for those Whatsapp chats where top scientists admit to being told to say that a lab-leak was "impossible", even though they suspected it was quite likely.
To this day, the conversation about funding GOF research has not had its time in the sun.
> The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously
Serious people took it seriously from day one. There was never a good reason not to, and many good reasons to demand an immediate investigation of WIV, GOF research in general, and the role of our own money funding the exact type of research that could create a coronavirus like this.
> I remember several high profile articles on it.
So do I, and I remember them being pretty easy to see for the hack jobs they were as well. The NYT had a genuinely good one after like a year and a half, long over due.
> Your narrative sounds like some fantasy.
Again, you can name one specific thing that I have claimed and ask me to source it for you; I won't do everything. All of this is easily findable.
I didn't even get into some of the gnarlier stuff, like how all across the West nursing homes were seeded with sick patients resulting in a huge number of early deaths. That was a suppressed story you might have missed, even though there were bits and pieces of it written up. Again, there's been very little accountability for that since.
What's pure fantasy is that we had some sort of reasoned debate, followed best-practice protocols, and came to measured decisions.
Science works on consensus and iteration. Government policy generally (and I think should) follow that process, not form policies on minority opinions at the time. For instance, although the droplet vs airborne debate was incorrect initially, the error was found and corrected via consensus, and government policy follow that consensus. That's how it SHOULD work.
Most of your writing is a bias filled rant, complete with misinformation (no, the consensus for science was that the lab leak was extremely unlikely, and still remains so today as far as I've seen, again, a few individual researchers thinking it likely does not make consensus).
You seem heavily invested in going against consensus and best practice, and I'm genuinely not interested in that position as I disagree with it. While things could have been better, given the circumstances the scientific community and world governments generally did a good job at protecting people.
On the topic of what should be allowed on social media, there is room for debate there, but I stand by that freedom of speech does not require you have equal standing or that people listen to you. I don't believe fringe science or non-science deserves equal time in the spotlight. So I suspect we won't be coming to any agreement.
> You seem heavily invested in going against consensus and best practice
You think best practices were followed? ... Really?
And I'll happily go along with a consensus that I feel was freely obtained, which is not what we are talking about. I do it all the time.
> but I stand by that freedom of speech does not require you have equal standing or that people listen to you
Do you believe that the amount you can be heard should depend on how much money you have?
Do you believe that an Administration should be allowed make secret decisions on what's shown to people?
> I don't believe fringe science or non-science deserves equal time in the spotlight. So I suspect we won't be coming to any agreement.
Maybe it wouldn't be fringe if millions of posts about it hadn't been suppressed.
Or if there'd been any serious attempt at investigation - gathering data, scientifically.
Or if we hadn't sent millions of dollars to fund research into this exact thing, and then lied about it as the pandemic raged. That data could have been very useful for policy.
There's a lot to it, and you've shown no sign that you actually understand the arguments. It's all appeals to authorities, who have consistently shown us just how captured they can be for some time now. Think of the 2008 financial crisis, or ivy-league colleges sending riot squads on peaceful protesters, or the APA 'legitimizing' and assisting torture, or the Supreme Court tolerating obvious bribery, Congressional insider trading, etc etc.
Yes best practices were followed, compared to objectively bad practices that you seem to be suggesting.
> And I'll happily go along with a consensus that I feel was freely obtained, which is not what we are talking about. I do it all the time.
Snake oil comment. You feel you get to be the judge of what is valid not actual consensus of experts. Nope. No thanks.
> Do you believe that the amount you can be heard should depend on how much money you have?
That's how it is currently. I'm not sure how you change that without going to something like communism, which surly you are not suggesting.
> Do you believe that an Administration should be allowed make secret decisions on what's shown to people?
100% yes. State secrets exist for a reason. If you mean decisions on what information people are allowed to disseminate then still yes. There are lots of classes of information that are rightly restricted. Excluding state secrets, things like child porn and other people's personal information are good examples. If you are advocating for some sort of anarchy then go find yourself your own island to ruin please.
> Maybe it wouldn't be fringe if millions of posts about it hadn't been suppressed.
Said like every crank with a pet theory. If you want your idea to be taken seriously it's on YOU to convince people and demonstrate evidence of them. It's not others obligation to listen to your crap, let alone fund you to "research" and spread your ideas.
"Best practices were followed, compared to what I imagine you think. Messaging was consistent and based on evidence. No I will not back any of this up in the slightest, nor acknowledge the myriad ways this is demonstrably, laughably false."
Cool, ok.
"Millions upon millions of posts might have been deleted, researchers threatened, media and social media leaned on in various ways, all documented, but the consensus is accurate. Science is a popularity contest, and you're snake oil".
Sssure.
"Money is speech, and the only alternative I can imagine is communism".
Sounds like a you problem tbh. A deep one.
"State secrets can include genuinely bad stuff, so 100% of everything they censor must be bad. Go ruin an island if you want better".
Sane take bud. I actually hate improving things where my family and I live. Also my solution to scientists being censored at global scale was in fact to move to a private island and become a dictator. How did you know? So impressive.
"The lab leak theory is for cranks. If those censored, pressured and threatened scientists wanted people to see their evidence, they should have demonstrated their evidence. Also they don't have a right for their evidence to be seen, or a right to investigate for evidence."
How many additional people died because the mitigations we put into place were targeted at a virus with a droplet based spread (like the flu) but not effective against a virus with an airborne spread (like the measles)?