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Comment by maxdoop | Hacker News Reader

And what about if they said “COVID might’ve been a lab leak ?”

You have valid examples, yes, but GP comment has a point as well.

...then they should be expected to back it up with a reasonable argument and supporting facts. If they can't do that, then they should expect push back. Even if they can do that they should expect push back - because that is how conversations work.

After all, what is the point in discussing something if ideas are not challenged or expected to have a sound argument behind them? To feel that you should be able to say anything you want and people cannot make a counter-point is absurd and quite selfish.

The people making those claims and providing evidence to back them up were actively censored by our largest media platforms.

That throws the whole possibility of debate and responding to critics out the window.

Do you have any evidence that they were actively censored as a conscious decision by employees of the largest social media platforms? Or did their opinions expressed simply lose them following and/or not generate their normal engagement?

If their "censorship" 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 "censorship" 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.

Those people were deplatformed and deamplified, rather than debated.

GP definitely has a valid point as do you. Speech was not equally free if the counter points weren’t allowed, which allowed a lot of people to say anything they want for a long time.

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.

https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-suspends-dr-li-meng-yan-wuh...

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.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/12/china-c...

Have you read The Twitter Files?

In other words, they had reputations and those reputations were damaged by the position they took.

That's how reputations work. "I will defend to your death the right to say it, but not the right to say it from my stage."

How far is someone's free speech allowed to encroach upon another's freedom of association?

The reasonable argument and support facts back then was the same as today. China had a research lab researching SARS-CoV viruses in the same location as the first cases of SARS-CoV-2.

People just didn't like the political implication, and that is not something which reasonable argument and supporting facts can solve.

I'm struggling to see where the harm or injury is here.

"Covid was most likely a lab leak" is currently on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and reddit. What was your point again?

The word "currently" is doing a lot of work here. Just a year ago that stance was still treated as heresy.

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