The censors don’t know everything.
That a censor declares Conclusion X to be the case, i.e. the truth, allegedly a good reason to prevent anyone from claiming the contrary on a forum, doesn’t actually mean that Conclusion X is true.
Consider recent predictions by Dave Rubin and Mr. Obvious that the Biden administration would impose a federal vaccine mandate. Big tech responded by censoring both men.
In July, Twitter shut down Rubin’s Twitter account until he removed a tweet about the desire of some for “a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago.”
Then Google removed a video from the Mr. Obvious YouTube channel predicting a federal vaccine mandate that would be announced only a week later.
“Maybe they thought that I was simply jumping the gun saying that Biden was going to do these federal mandates,” Mr. Obvious now comments. “Mr. Obvious was in fact right.”
These predictions did not promote criminality or terrorism.
They were based on savvy political assessments.
Those assessments are now vindicated.
Such vindication in a particular case is not required to establish the value of open discourse. But that the censors were so manifestly wrong here does dramatize a big whopping problem with censorship.
What now?
Surely, the policymakers at Twitter, Google, Facebook, et al., can see once again that their censorship is misguided; hanging their heads in shame, they will henceforth ensure that discussion on their forums is open and untrammeled.
Don’t prove me wrong, guys.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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