Disinformation, Misinformation, Where Does It End?

The problem with censorship is not the harm it does to conspiracy theorists, regime enemies, racists, sexist, homophobes, and armed insurrectionists, although their sufferings are not to be marginalized.

No, the big problem is that when the regime gets to censor its opponents it gets to do stupid stuff that ends up hurting the ruling class and its power.

Yep, every ruling class wants to control the narrative, and it usually does, because almost all the voices in society want to suck up to power.

For instance, my nickel says that, at the end of the COVID experience, wise heads will nod at the idea that the censoring of critics of the lockdown, vaccination, testing regime will turn out to be a strategic mistake for the ruling class, that ends up damaging it and its reputation.

It seems pretty clear that regime spokesmen like Anthony Fauci have used their power to censor perfectly valid scientific and research opinion. For what, St. Anthony?

Social media like to flag regime-critical posts as "disinformation" and "misinformation." Facebook recently flagged a British Medical Journal article article on a "host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia" a "contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial." Facebook flagged the article as "missing context.. could mislead people." Really, Facebook? Apparently the article was flagged by a Facebook contractor called "Lead Stories." And I am supposed to believe that an outfit I have never heard of is more reliable that the BMJ?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Look it is getting pretty obvious that the censorship on COVID-related reporting is coming around to haunt all the governments of the world. They have turned to massive lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations and suppression of alternative narratives because that is what governments do.

And if they can get away with censoring alternative viewpoints they will do that, because having to answer critics makes their job harder, in the sense that they have to get their messaging to align with the overall message from science, not just the ones that support their messaging and their policy.

This all got into high gear during the ruling class's five year campaign to get rid of Trump, and it clearly extended from the usual Democrat-aligned media to manipulation of search-engine results and social media posts.

In my own case, I found that my government spending site suddenly experienced a cut in traffic by 50 percent on April 2, 2019. I think that on that day Google implemented a search engine policy that promoted known institutions over mere websites. Which is fine, but what if the known institutions are lying? Or just stupid and ignorant? How would you know? By trusting the government? By trusting fact-check sites? By responding to pressure from the White House?

Really, there is no substitute for letting the various political sides, from right-wing conspiracy sites to left-wing activist sites, fight it out in the public square.

Because, you know what? In politics, in culture, in religion, everyone is creating a narrative based on their own particular understanding of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

And if you give people half a chance, they will start to lie, and cover up their mistakes, and silence the opposition, especially when their sacred narrative, their prophecy, starts to fail to provide an accurate and useful picture of the world. Because that's when they get desperate.

And in the end, they will damage their own interest, because they will use their power to censor the opposition in order to cover up their follies and their mistakes.

My own feeling is that censorship of any kind should be illegal except in the case of world war.

And I'm not sure that censorship is a good idea in a world war either.