[duairc]

Post about US funded biological weapons labs in Ukraine. I've seen half a dozen Twitter accounts banned and subreddits quarantined/banned over posting on that issue alone.

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the claim myself, though Victoria Nuland's "denial"[1] certainly raised a few eyebrows. She said that Ukraine has biological "research facilities" and implied that it would be a very bad thing if any of these "research materials" fell into the hands of the Russian forces. Whether that counts as a "biological weapons lab" or not seems to just be arguing about semantics.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y39veTO7kF4

[ericmay]

Or they were banned for spreading disinformation, or being traced back to Russian state sponsored agents. You didn’t see anyone get banned for anything specific unless you monitor everything they do including their source IP, because Twitter doesn’t send you a message and say “hey we banned this person because of their anti-American propaganda”.

> I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the claim myself, though Victoria Nuland's "denial"

Yea this tactic is called “simply asking the question” and it’s always done in poor faith.

I’m not saying Donald Trump is a child molester and eats babies, but that photo of him with Jeffery Epstein sure does seem fishy... [1]

[1] Random links that nobody clicks on but appears to give you credibility and creates doubt in the minds of others who scroll by and see it.

[vetinari]

> Or they were banned for spreading disinformation

"Disinformation" is a propaganda term. Unless you are Ministry of Truth, of course ;)

In practice, what is labeled "disinformation" is just what those in power do not want published. Or: "News Is What Somebody Does Not Want You To Print".

From personal experience, I have strong sense of deja-vu. I've seen all of this in 80's in my country. Exactly the same, except at the time it was reactionary propaganda.

> or being traced back to Russian state sponsored agents.

You see, for Chinese posting about Tiananmen Square is being traced back to US programs intended to undermine the statehood of independent countries. For them, it is the same thing pushed by state sponsored agents as you claim about Russians.

So either both are fine when censoring it, or neither is. (I personally take option two).

[throwaway0x7E6]

>Or they were banned for spreading disinformation

yeah, that's the exact wording the Chinese, Russian and other authoritarian regimes use as well. "disinformation"

one would think 2016 should've taught you people that the power you give to the government will eventually end up in the hands of the people you don't like

[NikolaNovak]

>>Or they were banned for spreading disinformation,

New to this thread, and I may agree with your stance, but if this is how you defend it, please stop :D

More seriously though: "Spreading disinformation" is such a vaguely-defined, over-used phrase to justify any and all censorship, that any attempt to use it automatically invites suspicion of bad faith; and usually correctly so. Add to that my own personal perspective that censorship on account of spreading disinformation invariably backfires spectacularly .

If under discussion is "everybody censors" and our best defense is "but we do it to combat spreading disinformation", we have lost and catastrophically so. EVERYbody does it to combat "disinformation", however they choose to define it.

(I'm not taking some extreme "all truths are relative" approach here either; I'm merely focusing on this specific justification for censorship as utterly untenable)

[duairc]

I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair for you to imply that I'm posting in bad faith.

The link I posted is not a "random" link, and whether you click on it or not is up to you, but it's a real video of Victoria Nuland (a high ranking US government official) speaking to the US Congress. It's not Russian propaganda.

I honestly don't really care if the US has biological weapons labs in Ukraine. I don't live in the US, or Ukraine, or Russia. I don't have any skin in that game. When I first saw rumours of it I thought it was a nonsense conspiracy theory. It wasn't until I saw Victoria Nuland's "denial" that I thought "huh, maybe there's something to that".