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0 pointskelnos4y ago0 comments

I'm not convinced that censoring ideas is healthy. Outright lies and attempts to generate panic and outrage might be an exception. But this isn't what's happening here: the article may be speculative and flawed, and may turn out to be incorrect, but it makes its case with actual real data, not with hand-waving and conspiracy theories. Even if none of the "popular" variants (or the original virus) came from a lab leak, this is an angle we need to be investigating, and silencing people who talk about it is counterproductive and dangerous.

Sure, the tinfoil hat crowd will likely take things like this and run with them in all the wrong ways. But that's going to happen regardless, and that's just the price of living in a society where we can and should be able to discuss ideas freely, even ideas many of us may vehemently disagree with.

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fer4y ago

Censoring ideas isn't healthy, but platforms that snowball bits of information into dangerous wackery for ad revenue aren't exactly healthy either.

It's funny how some people are swift to be against gain-of-function research because of its dangers, but when it's social media the one playing with petri dishes of information for (and I think I'm going to coin a new term here) "gain-of-engagement research", then for the same people free speech is paramount and social media blocking content is literally 1984. Not saying that's you or GP, but it's a common overlap in my experience.

Everyone should be able to read whatever they want. I can't argue with that, because I defend that.

What I disagree with is with corporations (or any institution, really) abusing their position to spoon-feed content only to maximize some function regardless the externalities of the spread of such content. That's not free speech, that's giving a megaphone to the loudest and most digestible yet polarizing ideas.

So, sure, I think GP should be always allowed to share that on his FB with their peers. But maybe feeding that content to people who will potentially misunderstand it just because it generates engagement isn't the best thing to do. How can FB know that? No idea, but it shouldn't be our problem.