A federal judge yesterday ordered the Biden administration to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies, siding with Missouri and Louisiana in a lawsuit that alleges Biden and his administration violated the First Amendment by colluding with social networks “to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content.”
This is about attempts to stop folks from spreading provably wrong info online that’s killing people. It’s like protecting the free speech of someone yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.
The headline is also overstated. Its a preliminary injunction and of course its from a Trump nominee.
But Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee at US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits on the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
But if the government can pressure platforms to remove provably false information that is actively killing people, it will have a chilling effect on my constitutional freedom to lie to people. Won’t somebody please think of the grifters and anti-sciencers?
Was it antiscience to say covid originated in a lab in China?
Was it antiscience to say 2 weeks to flatten the curve was BS?
Was it antiscience to say cloth masks were ineffective?
Was it antiscience to question the long term efficacy of a drug that was not studied for the long term?
Was it antiscience to question the long term side effects of a drug that was not studied for the long term?
At one point or another every one of those questions was considered antiscience and is now begrudgingly accepted by the experts.
Saying those things before having any data to back them up was indeed anti-science.
You couldn’t know they didn’t have data if they didn’t have the ability to present it. Once censored, it’s impossible to tell what media is, that’s the point of censorship.
You can’t know if what was censored was false information, if you don’t have the data on what was said.Questioning is the heart and soul of science. Doubting included.
To censor doubt is a demand for agreement, and an intimidation of dissent.
There was a time I would believe you whole heartedly.
I despise book bans.
I see people try to censor other people’s very existence.
I hate China’s authoritarian laws.
I wish to strive to allow as much free speech and liberty reasonably possible.
Then COVID happened. Misinformation, narrative pushing, and just plain lying. My grandma died from the virus in a hospital not consistently wearing masks or even checking for it in the first place. A hospital wear fox news plays abound and nurses proudly talk about their “knowing” of what actually is happening.
I have to ask myself, is this worth it?
I don’t think so. A line must be drawn somewhere.
This is bullshit. They were calling certain things misinformation before they themselves knew. What gives them authority to do this and who actually decides what is true? At the time many scientists, including the CDC director (who was forcibly sidelined after sharing his position), were saying we should investigate the lab leak theory, and they were all silenced as a result. Scientists were saying that they wouldn’t have suggested quarantine (including the UKs top health advisor) as the understaffed medical/health facilities would cause more death than quarantines would save, they were saying that masks had little to no impact on CORONA viruses in the past and peer-reviewed articles suggesting this were literally removed from websites; the list goes on. Meanwhile the MSM was literally spreading misinformation like the Ivermectin story or the vaccine stopping spread story. You really have to trust someone quite a bit to just go along with this while all your freedoms are diminishing.
That’s a whole lot of claims with little to no sources backing them up.
