The disinformation conspiracy between the left and Big Tech

 David Harsanyi:

"We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, almost matter-of-factly, in July. The same week, Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield insisted that social media companies “should be held accountable” for misinformation on their platforms, singling out “conservative news outlets who are creating irresponsible content.” Even President Joe Biden got in on the act, accusing Facebook of “killing people” by allowing misinformation, before walking it back.

While those considered guilty of spreading “misinformation” won’t find themselves under lock and key, the underlying inclination of those in power has a long and sordid history in America.

Protecting people from the scourge of “misinformation” has been the leading rationale for censorship since nearly the beginning of the republic. In the second year of his presidency, John Adams griped that there had been “more new error propagated by the press in the last ten years than in a hundred years before 1798.” Congress soon helped Adams tackle the purported flood of misinformation by passing the Sedition Act, making the dissemination of “any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government” illegal. And, as with most censorship efforts, the law was soon used as a cudgel by those in power. The first person who found himself jailed under the new law was the rambunctious Adams critic Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont.

When President Woodrow Wilson became concerned that antiwar protesters would undermine support for his entrance into World War I, his allies passed another Sedition Act, empowering the postmaster general to censor any letter, pamphlet, or book that conveyed “false reports or false statements.” Wilson enacted censorship policies in conjunction with not only Congress, but with powerful newspaper owners and business interests. Numerous dissenters found themselves in prison, including the prominent socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. Hardly anyone complained.

These days, every alleged font of misinformation — “white supremacy,” “Russian interference,” partisan debate over the pandemic — is an existential threat against democracy. The establishment Left, by which I mean those in charge of most institutions in society today, continues to normalize the idea that it is moral to suppress ideas to shield citizens, as if they were children, from dangerous speech. Major outlets such as the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and many others run op-eds arguing, citing “experts,” that zealous adherence to First Amendment protections is hopelessly antiquated in a time of mass “disinformation.”

Setting aside First Amendment concerns, the state has no moral claim to dictate the veracity of speech. As we’ve learned during the coronavirus pandemic, health officials have trouble conveying truth. The oscillations, obfuscations, and confusing messaging of the CDC and other health officials have done more to corrode trust in science and government than any conspiracy theorist could ever hope to achieve spreading misinformation on a social media platform. We’re going to have to figure it out ourselves. One of the obvious problems with regulating “misinformation,” through state pressure or otherwise, is that a person would have to accept that most “facts” have already been adjudicated. But that is often not the case. During last year’s pandemic, for example, Facebook was pressured, and acquiesced, to ban posts that theorized that COVID-19 had been man-made and manufactured in China. The “misinformation” was prohibited over fears that such talk would fuel anti-Asian sentiment. Yet, the debate over the origins of the pandemic was not resolved. It is still not resolved. Only when a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report was leaked to newspapers did we learn that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick enough in November 2019 to be hospitalized, and Facebook lifted the ban. For nearly a year, it was impossible for millions of people to discuss a completely reasonable question.
...

There is more.

The left and its media minions have been serially wrong in their reports of the virus from the beginning.  At best the government offices of the CDC and NIH have been incoherent.  They have gone back and forth on the efficacy of masks and whether the virus can be transmitted on hard surfaces.  The censors have actually made it more difficult to deal with the virus because of their suppression of a debate.

Reliance on the "science" is fraught with difficulty because many things are still moving targets.  The same can be said about climate "science" where predictions of the end times have been serially wrong for decades.

See, also:

Former Biden COVID adviser concedes cloth masks 'are not very effective'