Corporate Censorship: The Lab Leak Hypothesis and The Twitter Files

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Bill Kerney

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Published on March 3, 2023 7:06:53 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qQkNKyXT-8

Duration: 34:45

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What interests me about the Lab Leak theory is not whether or not it's true (though I have a mild interest in that), but in the tech industry's reaction to people talking about the theory. Twitter and Facebook both worked to suppress discussion on the idea, which sounds like a terrible thing to do. They state they were trying to minimize harm to Asian Americans, which seems an admirable thing to do. So then the question becomes - in which cases is minimizing harm justified? When is it better to have free speech on these digital platforms? It's your job to tell me in your next discussion assignment.

The big story about the Twitter Files isn't what anyone is talking about (coverage on both sides has been terrible), but rather these three things:
1) The FBI had a lot of people working as unpaid moderators for Twitter, which is both weird and maybe actual censorship (you tell me in the discussions) and
2) They had tools to control the reach of people whose viewpoints they didn't like, which gave them much more control over the national discourse than people knew and
3) While Twitter was praised by groups like the EFF for issuing Transparency Reports each year, they violated their own rules for the Transparency Reports and did not disclose the FBI's involvement in their moderation activities, as they were required to do under the Santa Clara Principles.