It’s been the struggle for scientific progress, the breakthroughs are the exception not the rule and the reason is the culture of belief around the science of the time
The lesson I’ve most learned from science is that the questions are more interesting than the answer and the answers we have are a way to ask new questions
(But then, that "a lot" is there for a reason. There has been some bad behavior from the platform too.)
The article says they were "pressured", it doesn't seem to to say how that pressure was applied. To me, it reads as though compliance was not mandated, just requested. Without more info, I suppose it could be taken either way.
"Crank vs sincere skeptic" is fallacious, as it attacks the person and not the argument.
The Biden Harris government is guilty of censorship via a third party.
He isn't suing, and it's up to the rest of us to make our decisions based on how we feel about that.
Since when science can't be challenged, even when the challenge can be outrageously wrong?
Facebook is no different. Just bigger.
Flat earthers are not “legitimately questioning the science”
This is called JAQing off. “Just Asking Questions”. They’re not. They’re muddying waters, often knowingly.
Well yes, because one is trying to get to a positive outcome while the other is trying to confuse and mislead you for ideological reasons.
Your retreat into legality and semantics is telling.
You responded, you obviously think you're making a point. I hope you're one of the cranks though, because that would explain how poor your argument is.
Not exclusively, no. There's nothing in the definitions of the words 'censor' or 'censorship' that imply it is an act exclusive to governments.
Effectively, something can be censorship even if the government is not involved.
When the government is involved, then it's government censorship.
Pot, meet kettle.
God forbid anybody show any intellectual curiosity if it went against the doomer dogma.
And the worst part is the people with the “wrong think” were right. Covid didn’t have a “4% kill rate”. It almost certainly came from a lab. The vaccine was not always safe and definitely wasn’t effective. Lockdowns didn’t work and neither did masks. Closing school for two years and keeping kids locked inside on iPads will fuck them up for the rest of their lives.
And saying any of that resulted in being banned, accused of “dangerous thought”, and being yelled at by society.
Also you are still wrong about most of that. The vaccine is certainly safe and effective, masks definitely help, lockdowns definitely helped the overrun hospitals. Yes there were adverse effects in some of these policies unfortunately.
You desperately need to remove yourself from communities of perpetual victimhood.
All I said was that they are not legitimately questioning the science, because they are not.
The one thing that is extremely interesting is that even the people who loudly shout for free speech do not themselves believe in it, as they constantly try to cancel all sorts of free speech and expression essentially constantly.
Very very few people believe in absolute free speech.
He is making sworn statements to the house judiciary committee.
Are you saying he is lying and the BidenHarris admin is telling the truth?
Why would he do that? And why does all the evidence of censored accounts on Facebook match up with the Twitter Files and what everyone saw happening?
The discourse as I interpreted it, was that there was a need to censor those who are expressing opinions that are not "legitimate".
The public at large however is not informed enough to have a legitimate opinion.
I'm saying he might have found the circumstances distasteful but he didn't find them a violation of his rights worthy of a lawsuit.
That the crank can actually change things just by thinking about it, like some kind of half-assed troll telekinesis. Wow. You've apparently got a few fans for your idiocy, they're downvoting away.
People question science all the time. Heck we all have people who tell us about this herb or diet that will fix things, or how plastic is deadly.
In addition the platforms removed this content, not the govt. And the platforms would 100% do it again, since we are discussing this topic with the benefit of hindsight.
Misinfo evidence shows that once misinfo is absorbed and accepted, people defend it. If the data shows that those scientists and doctors were wrong - people would ignore the data and reiterate their talking points.
For practical purposes though, the kind of censorship that we're concerned with in this conversation can't be done by anyone other than a government or a lunatic with a gun. Companies just don't have any authority over anyone except themselves. They can't deprive you of your ability to speak, only your ability to use their property to do so.
There were plenty of things besides a myopic fixation on one single problem to the exclusion of literally everything else.
It takes an extreme amount of privilege to look back and say we should have done any of that.
… it was unethical, immoral, authoritarian and plain evil. I don’t care if any of it “worked” because even if it did the costs vastly outweigh any of the “working” bit. The fact it requires a lot of contortion to show any effect at all should give a reasonable person a concerned pause. Any idiot off the street should be able to clearly see the effects of masks and lockdowns without reading a bunch of statistics first. This is clearly not the case at all….
And again, doesn’t matter if “it worked” because “it worked” only holds true in the most myopic, sheltered, privileged world view possible. For any view that sees the world through a lens besides Covid, what we did was clearly insane.
What Facebook does though, is horrific. They are not just letting illegitimate science have a platform, they are actively and intentionally propping that shit up because it creates victimhood communities.