> The goal of a responsible platform should be to not put its thumb (as a platform) on the scales of an election.
You earnestly believe censoring the laptop story was congruent with this principle?
I'm sorry but I just cannot believe that you are a real person. *Obviously* putting their thumb on the scale was the entire point of the censorship! I'm in serious disbelief that you wrote this and posted it.
If you disagree with the logic, then identify which part you disagree with. Here are your options:
1. Content moderation teams should not have been suspicious of an unsourced, anonymous story on NYPost based on allegedly stolen material
2. Content moderation teams should not impede content that they suspect are election interference attempts
Which is it?
Even if some speech is known to be false (insofar as your epistemology allows), it should be criticized and proven to be false by more speech, not silenced through censorship.
In any case, I'm still baffled by how you think you've articulated logic that can supports that they "didn't put their finger on the scale". Obviously they did, obviously they knew they did. What other reason could they have for doing it? If your principle were instead "they should put their finger on the scale when opposing actors intentionally spreading false information" at least you'd be consistent.
Though then the irony of this whole thing is that the story was true the whole time.
I'd much rather deal with information assymetries from individuals within the community than information assymetries from whoever happens to have control over the platforms, and is willing to use censorship.
I'd also like to add that a lot of these misinformation studies ironically wound up using information now accepted to be true or likely (such as that COVID most likely originated from a Chinese lab) as their "misinformation" - so in a way I'm glad that countering with "true" information didn't unilaterally work.
Ah this must be why you're confused. You think the hazard that platforms are trying to manage is from "individuals within the community" and not, for example, foreign intelligence services.
> information now accepted to be true or likely (such as that COVID most likely originated from a Chinese lab)
Lmao uh oh. The mark of the terminally-online has been revealed! Hilarious how many Twitterites have come to simply believe that COVID originated from a lab over the last year or two despite zero new evidence emerging in favor of that theory, and actually tons of evidence against it emerging since then. It's almost like if read false information enough times, you'll just presume it to be true... Curious ain't it?
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/reps/new-doc-drop-slack-m...
https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-departm...
You are (mistakenly) substantiating it though: there has not been new evidence in favor of the lab leak in several years! You're right!
Meanwhile, evidence in favor of a natural origin has continued to pile up.
It's telling that you refuse to just follow your own logic and rationale even just a single step further.
This is provably false, as in this is not how speech online functions.
The whole system of suppression today, is built around the idea of flooding the channels with more content than can be assessed and analyzed. A room full of people shouting and no one having the time to understand.