This article is not written for international audiences.

Alot of those activist employees actively suppress non-progressive talking points on hn. Can I prove that with data as Dang has asked me to do...? Only if I have access to the logs is my answer.

Things which have actual evidence get to move from "conspiracy theory" to "fact".

I don't think the WMD thing was anyone being wrong; rather it was a deliberate lie to justify a war that was wanted for other reasons.

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.

"I think we should stop asserting that what we perceive to be the right view is the right one for all."

Nobody is asserting that, or even hinting at it. You have to have the most sensitive, assumptive and skeptical, upside reading of that to suggest that 'Having Facebook Available' as some kind of statement in support of 'One Truth'.

Modi's government is one of the most corrupt and dysfunctional in thew world and becoming excessively authoritarian.

Facebook, with it's obvious shortcomings, is one reasonably managed voice among many.

On the whole, having a fairly open Facebook is considerably better than having a Completely Corrupt Modi Facebook.

Facebook is not a tool or organ of the US and is not an organ of US state propaganda.

While some of the 'New Rules' seem reasonable, others definitely do not, and have authoritarian implications [1] including direct government oversight over some forms of content.

" I am quite sure the local people there are not wishing for someone from outside to come and save them."

I'm pretty sure that people would like access to critical information wherever they are.

I don't use FB, I don't care about it, but I would go to my first protest ever if my government tried to politicize it.

[1] https://theprint.in/india/governance/modi-govt-announces-tou...

India is an incredibly diverse country; "local people" isn't a meaningful term. As an Indian, I agree with the parent comment that Facebook and Twitter work well in comparison to local systems. Pointing this out isn't tone deaf in the least.

I love that you’re getting downvoted for telling the actual truth instead of everyone else who is now rewriting history to explain why they’ve had this sudden change of heart. At least CNN was honest yesterday when they said “trump said it so we immediately took the other side, no we look kinda foolish”

A lot of the privileged Indians are rooting for a fascist government, that would "restore" their religious and caste elitism from 2000 years ago. This requires a constant dissemination of fake news and calls to violence, which Twitter is tagging as misleading information.

Hence, the anger in the comments and downvoting by upper caste folks of Indian origin.

Do you have Independent judiciary and media in your country?

No argument here, but I don't think the Modi government constitutes a competing platform.

The only competition out there is going to abuse India's market and create an even worse paradigm shift. Newer platforms will be forced to be monitored/moderated by the state instead of a third party, which invites political oppression and censorship on a scale that's hard to fathom.

All other points aside, do you think Facebook constitutes free expression? Because, it looks like to me that it's a place where censorship is rampant and executives select regimes or political parties to back and affect sentiment on. "But, free speech..." does not at all seem to be an adequate response to me.

What do you think is the social order in India?

Sorry, I know John Oliver et al informed me I must hate them, but I like both of them. I can only give you a list of great things that they've both done. Would that suffice?

> I assume courts will act against it

This is not a good assumption. I've seen lots of cases in the developed world where the courts do nothing.

One would hope. But that is not what is going to happen. People do not talk over small networks because they are inconvenient due to their small size. It is more convenient to talk over large networks because there are more people to talk to.

If you ban a massive centralized network, another one will take its place. It will certainly be smaller than Facebook, but no less centralized. And in this particular case, I would imagine that based on the Indian government's grievances with these American networks, information will almost certainly be less free on the replacement.

1. The number of people talking on small networks will probably go up.

2. The total number of people talking on all networks will probably go down.

The decrease in 2 is probably orders of magnitude larger than the increase in 1. I don't think that it's necessarily a positive change.

Why do you assume that it would be a good thing?

Bigger companies have much bigger kitty and clout and they can fight back when something unreasonable is being pushed down the throat.

Smaller companies will be completely at the mercy of the governments.

I am guessing that these companies are deliberately waiting for a court case.

The circumstantial evidence both then and now was largely favor of lab leaks. Members of the scientific community with a potential culpability in a lab leak helped silence discourse by framing it as a political issue as opposed to a scientific one, helped by America’s ever so controversial President coming out in support of a lab leak.

With Trump gone and even more time elapsing with no reasonable natural origin of COVID found, a lab leak is back in the mainstream, even though we should’ve been discussing it from the beginning based on circumstantial evidence. It’s plainly evident that allowing these platforms to regulate our speech in this manner is poisonous. But whatever it takes to silence Trump and his ilk, I guess.

Edit: I see I’ve been downvoted for this. I suggest people look at the facts themselves and decide whether a lab leak should’ve ever been dismissed as a crockpot theory.

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

I think you've been reading too much left-wing propaganda. Certain groups within the political and media class love calling Tom Cotton and and Mike Pompeo racists, but that doesn't make it true. You can read Tom Cotton's April 21, 2020 op-ed[0] where he says the lab leak was a theory.

If there are other writings or speeches from these 2 people that were talking about the lab leak theory where they were being racist, I would love to see it, but I don't think it exists (I'm happy to be corrected).

[0] https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/-cotton-op...

I think what I said was misinterpreted.

The American media is NOT independent.

But because at least the American government doesn't ban and censor websites, I effectively have independent media because I can look at any non-American media that I wish.

That's why I cautioned to not wish banning or censorship upon your own local law, wherever you are. If they are allowed the precedent of banning Facebook, they can also ban Al-Jazeera or BBC or DW or Wikipedia or whatever you wish to actually look at.

You're touching on an important point, which is that users are essentially powerless in these online platforms. They are authoritarian entities whose interests align with users only incidentally, if at all. I do not think the state is better, as the state is generally captured by commercial interests anyhow.

Since censorship is almost certain be implemented by just not showing content that is banned in the countries where it is banned rather than an American company allowing the Indian government dictate what it can show Americans what do you do if Indians realize they need a vpn to get the whole picture and start bypassing government restrictions.

Better to be banned by Twitter than be imprisoned by the Indian government, surely?

Obviously problematic is a spectrum. Banning them is problematic too. But yes, conspiracy theories are problematic. They lead to poorly informed decisions such as anti-vac and asian discrimination and anti-semitism.

Consipracy theories: 'the election was rigged', lets storm yhe Capitol are just as capable of leading to authoritarian behaviours

People were banned for falsely asserting it was confirmed to be a lab leak. That's still a false assertion.

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.

I agree with what you are saying here, but it doesn't change the fact that people like Pompeo were clearly trying to shift a greater percentage of the blame from the US to China and the lab origin theory was part of that effort.

Violence is wrong. At the same time, actions have consequences. Perhaps the Israelis should have been worrying about the diaspora when they were lynching Palestinians in the street.

You are arguing with the wrong person. I actually like Apartheid.

The bigger problem is when platforms block the content. In this case very few people will hear about the conspiracy theory. So then few will know that this is something worth investigating. This dramatically hinders research into the (potentially true) conspiracy theory.

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.

I disagree it's clear that any hypothetical censorship of "conspiracy theories that are false" wouldn't later be used on "conspiracy theories that are true".

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.

>If so, where do you propose the line exists?

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.

On the 14th of June 2017, a gunman radicalized by Facebook shot a member of Congress, Steve Scalise, after asking about his political affiliation. This actual shooting which actually left Scalise in hospital fighting for his life with serious internal injuries which required multiple life-saving operations did not lead to any of the media hand-wringing about political violence that the storming of the Capitol - where the members of Congress who "feared for their lives" were barracaded securely away from the supposed potential threat, and the only person who got shot was one of the people storming the building - did. Instead, the Democrats and publications like the New York Times pushed a completely false narrative that actually, Scalise and his party were the ones that inspired the shooting of a member of Congress, falsely blaming the shooting of Gabby Giffords on them when in reality that had nothing to do with national partisan politics at all.

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.

> But do you agree we should stop it when their instrument of voicing said opinion goes from online forum to pitchforks and firearms?

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.

That’s simply false. They don’t block stories that doxx people’s private addresses, their policies are enforced unequally and only when it suites their own political agenda, whatever that may be.

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.

Can you give an example?

What sort of ownership interest do you mean?

I always thought entertainment and audience to promote your personal brand is what you get in return.

So the question is who decides. Do you let rich coastal Americans determine what you're allowed to talk about or do you let local powers make those decisions? Indians aren't very fond of foreign rule, and no control is more potent than control over information and ideas.

Then we would just have the same fight over what is considered evidence.

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 that good enough direct evidence for scientists pressuring the global discourse against a lab leak?

No, because your accusation wasn't that they simply impacted global discourse. Your accusation was that they maliciously silenced discourse as an effort to avoid their own personal culpability. Where is the evidence for that?

All four facts you list are circumstantial and you even admit that one of them wasn't truly known at the time this theory was first being popularized. To repeat myself, I don't think it is unreasonable to want more than that before leveling these accusations, especially when it is known ahead of time that some people will use your "questions" to support their own political and anti-scientific motives.

What makes you think I don't speak up against it or wont vote against it?

The three links you posted don't require me to take up arms :)

1) It is a regrettable event in which courts have did the right thing.

2) Sorry, I cannot read it.

3) It is an opinion column in an online publication.

Can you explain how elected legislators from kashmir were arrested without charges for a year when Kashmir's government lost its status as a democracy?

None of which changes the fact that what is actually happening is that the Indian government is the one seeking to dominate information to drive Indians to believe what they are told to believe.

It cares not in the slightest whether Indians get access to things Facebook cares to censor (which they can anyway, through the large majority of Indian media Facebook does not influence or seek to influence) but is determined to browbeat Facebook into removing evidence that the Indian government's handling of COVID might be suboptimal. This is the purpose of the policy. Reinstating posts on lab leak theories is not the purpose of the policy, and the American coastal elite (or Bangalore tech elite) will continue to censor stuff they want to on their platforms in addition to the more pervasive and more universal Indian-government censorship.

Takes a remarkable degree of dishonesty to make freedom of thought arguments in favour of the Indian government being able to prevent any material it does not agree with from reaching Indian eyeballs.

They are all quite strong of facts. There's an easily explainable origin of the virus, being the lab. If you read the article there is even an explanation about the exact virus this seems to be quite similar to that was discovered in 2013 and sent to WIV. In fact, I would say that an animal origin for the virus being in Wuhan is MORE outrageous in this case if you were to actually look at the natural ranges of bats in China. Bats dont exist in Wuhan. Their natural ranges are in the Southern provinces of China, which makes sense considering that's where SARS originated. Wuhan makes absolutely 0 sense if you're evaluating a natural origin from a scientific perspective.

We have a complete aberration in viral behavior that defines all known facts of how viruses jump from species to species. It's an extraordinary exception that we haven't seen in any other similar virus.

We have no known a natural origin, went over that already.

The strongest fact may actually be the last one. A majority 40 victims could not be in any way linked to the place that the CPC claims the virus had started. That's actually really, really extraordinary. Think about what this means - there's either missing viral victims in the early outbreak (a whole lot of them) or there's transmission vectors we missed. So why should we default to the natural origin as the default explanation and call everything else a conspiracy theory, which you're continuing to do?

So yeah, when you take all 4 of those facts together and try to explain them with a natural origin hypothesis, it just falls apart. If you frame them from the perspective of a lab leak, it's far easier to link them together and explain them.

The mainstream media shouldn't have taken the scientists at face value when their conclusions were baseless! There was even less evidence for a natural origin than a lab leak, but we accepted it as common fact! It's not as if a natural origin is the default explanation we should fall back on when we have no other explanation - we need to have probable cause to declare that and establish anything else as a conspiracy theory that early on. It was irresponsible on the scientists involved and it was irresponsible of the media. And it was even worse for the tech platforms to silence people for daring to talk about this just because Trump said it, and everything Trump says is bad.

Yeah, that statement is still true, by the way. Peter Daszak had a conflict of interest, lied about it, and now it looks like his conclusions were wrong. So, yeah. That's at least one actor with some "bad intent".