I'm not qualified to say if the lab leak has any credence, but it wouldn't be the first time the powers at be have been wrong. Just look at the classic "WMDs in the Middle East" rhetoric that lead us to war.
But agreed in general; I think there's a lot of political opposition on the left to the lab-leak theory, in no small part because Trump pushed so hard to blame the Chinese for the virus while in office. Even if unlikely, a lab leak is far from impossible as a cause, and we should talk about it and explore it until evidence conclusively rules it out.
Are they? It's easy to walk down the slippery road that leads to authoritarian behaviors.
So I would disagree that "conspiracy theories are problematic." Some are problematic, but there are also some that turn out to be extremely important. No progress is made without questioning authority and the status quo.
Investigating wrongdoing and backing up findings with evidence is extremely important. Spouting unfounded lies is not.
I have less of a problem with marking things as unfounded if they are actually unfounded. I wouldn't use the term misleading because not all unfounded claims are false. There's still a lot of gray area here. Maybe the person in charge of making those judgements is not a subject matter expert. Or maybe the person making the claim has some additional information that cannot be revealed. (Perhaps they are inside the organization and cannot leak too much or they will be caught.)
I would set the bar for marking things as misleading as requiring evidence to the contrary. I think it is fine to mark things as lacking evidence, as long as that can be established fairly and reliably. I have my doubts that this can be done reliably, but as long as there is no blocking occurring, I think the harm of a mistake is minimized. Anyone claiming to be an impartial subject matter expert capable of making these judgements should provide evidence of that claim.
To me, the latter is too big a price to pay for the former.
If so, where do you propose the line exists?
If not, I would suggest you're advocating that the "loudest" voice (where volume is measured by firepower) always gets their way.
The line is drawn where an actual crime is committed.
I'm not really a fan of pre-crime control measures, but that's a personal opinion.
This isn't even a "both sides" thing, because I'm pretty sure there isn't any actual equivalent of the attack on Scalise but on the other side. It stands almost entirely alone in recent US political history, a uniquely awful example of America's political polarisation turning into a justification for violence and attempted assassination that came incredibly close to succeeding. (Also, I would be shocked if one of the things that radicalized the attacker wasn't false claims of presidential election rigging, just because they were so utterly pervasive on social media amongst people with his political affiliation back then.)
All the mainstream American media narratives about the dangers of political violence have nothing to do with actual political violence. It's a weapon they use against the political side they oppose and stop caring about or even become apologists for when the side they support is carrying out the violence.
Sure, believing any conspiracy theory is not a justification for breaking the law.
> If so, where do you propose the line exists?
The line is already clearly defined by the law. Ranting on Facebook about conspiracies (true or not) is legal. Nonviolent protests are legal. Storming the Capitol obviously isn't.
Clearly not - we know that it is possible for elections to be fraudulent and people can talk about it. We don't yet live in a post-truth society. Evidence counts.
There is obviously no clear delineation between these two categories and the censors (ie government or big tech) would be incentivized to bill some instances of the latter category as the former.
Not that I believe the election was stolen, but I think the lab leak is the most credible, to a great degree because it was censored so badly earlier.
Is it misleading to say that a group of doctors conspired to ensure that black Americans died of a disease they could have cured, just so that they could study their effects?
Because those are conspiracy theories, and they are both true.
I'm not aware of any major news outlet - liberal or otherwise - "finally admitting now that the lab leak hypothesis is probably right" at this point. The WSJ story the other day doesn't come close to that assertion yet.
So people or stories get banned even if they are true for some other reasons. You don't know what those reasons are, and they may change going forward.
https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/privacy_violatio...
> We remove content that shares, offers or solicits personally identifiable information or other private information that could lead to physical or financial harm, including financial, residential and medical information, as well as private information obtained from illegal sources.
Pretending they’re being fair, when you know they’re not is gaslighting.
You may think it’s ok for them to apply their policies unequally, and dishonestly; that’s another discussion, but please don’t act like what they’re doing is fair or honest.
The biggest example of them not blocking doxxing was the implicit help in spreading the Parlar hacked data. I know of fb devs who participated in spreading it.
It can also be very easily argued that the leader of the BLM movement is a public figure and sharing her home address is not doxxing. And I’m sure that argument has been used to allow sharing private info of similar public figures who Facebook’s progressive devs didn’t care for.
This is such a false spin on what was actually happening. It was only a year ago. It isn't hard to remember. People were banned/downvoted to oblivion for merely suggesting the lab leak was a credible theory, not for claiming it was definitely the 100% truth. Stop gaslighting.