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Comment by Flatcircle | Hacker News Reader

For me, the most startling line in the article is,

"Nearly every SARS case since the original epidemic has been due to lab leaks."

I wasn't aware that so many cases have been due to lab leak. This would have been valuable information at the start of the pandemic.

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You weren't allowed to have that information at the start of the pandemic because, without the guiding hand of the media, you might have misinterpreted it and come to a then-racist conclusion.

I had all of this information, most of it from a little known "quarantined" subreddit. Luckily reddit didn't outright ban it for so many users proposing the "misinformed" lab leak theory. There was a lot of random/fake info but there was also very accurate information which was outright banned everywhere.

and meanwhile I was watching the circus in the media, and wasn't allowed to even spread this "misinformation"

Seriously, if the tech companies are going to censor, they should at least get the facts right, over something serious enough to cost lives.

The problem is that you simply cannot "get the facts right" when the facts do not exist. We did not, and still do not, know where the virus came from.

It's very easy to look back and say "yes well of course this thing was just fake news, but they also censored this other thing that we now know was true!". Either platforms shouldn't censor anything in these situations, or we have to accept the realities of censorship under uncertainty.

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