When you say "the administration", it's worth noting you're describing actions by two different administrations. Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship.
Censoring an interview with a political opponent is a far cry from spreading disinformation that is counter to broadly accepted medical advice during a pandemic with the intent of harming the general population.
More to the point… the same president was in power during when COVID information was supposedly being censored, and today when political opposition is supposedly being censored.
So OPs argument that it’s both parties doing it falls flat on its face.
Sure, but that's the straw-man version of the argument. During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Satire, comedy, and truly live questions (like the weak version of the lab leak hypothesis, that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally escaped from a lab into human population) were censored alongside the obviously false, harmful, and misleading takes about drinking bleach and Ivermectin.
Both science and democracy require active conversation that permits dissenting viewpoints and challenges to the accepted wisdom. Once we have an organization deciding what "the truth" is, we're doomed to stagnation and extremely vulnerable to organizational capture by self-motivated people.
In other words, once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted by people with anti-social intents.
Unfortunately, reasonable views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed. Kulldorff only responded to a question saying: "COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children." Which is correct, mainstream epidemiology and was the government guidance in the most countries at the time.
He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it.
Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits.
This seems like a tenuous connection at best. The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-...
They do know that. They are disingenuously attempting to equate asking a platform to remove disinformation with using government resources to threaten a platform into silence.
CGMthrowaway|12 days ago
You're right, thanks. If I could edit I would
dsl|12 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
true_religion|12 days ago
So OPs argument that it’s both parties doing it falls flat on its face.
aftbit|12 days ago
Both science and democracy require active conversation that permits dissenting viewpoints and challenges to the accepted wisdom. Once we have an organization deciding what "the truth" is, we're doomed to stagnation and extremely vulnerable to organizational capture by self-motivated people.
In other words, once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted by people with anti-social intents.
mrandish|12 days ago
https://undark.org/2024/01/08/covid-misinformation-censorshi...
How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
lesuorac|12 days ago
He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it.
Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta
UncleMeat|12 days ago
jajuuka|12 days ago
There are also correspondence about moderation right after Biden was elected from his admin. So he's not blameless here. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/...
Personally I don't care, but we should at least be factual in criticism.
plagiarist|12 days ago