Shai-Tan
Banned
That may be the case for someone like Pierre Korry and the FLCC who are merely incompetent judges of scientific information but if you go look at figures like Malone, McCullough, Weinstein, etc (see second half of the Decoding the Gurus for receipts on that) they are full on conspiracy theorists spreading demonstrably false info. They aren’t just asking questions.
That said, you ask how a lay person judges that and the answer is not easily. For example, the steps Massimo Pigliucci outlines here
are both time consuming and demanding of basic science literacy. So while what would count as significant harm follows from vaccine conspiracy theories and misinformation (under Mill’s Harm Principle in On Liberty, contra typical “free speech fundamentalist” reasoning), Mill was above all else an empiricist and it’s questionable that taking action on that content will get the desired result if a significant amount of the harmed listeners are attracted to it because they have a pre existing conspiratorial mindset and have low levels of science literacy, setting up a ready made persecution narrative. So it’s an open question by consequentalist reasoning that censorship would have the desired effect. For an even stronger reason when those listeners don’t only hear that information on Joe Rogan or a weird alternative media source, but on Tucker Carlson.
A further consideration is “the problem of the censor”. Brian Leiter outlines a litany of reasons to doubt the widely held marketplace of ideas model that is falsely attributed to Mill here:
but he concludes regardless that a libertarian stance on speech is desirable because many of the same forces that affect listeners also affect censors and the directionality of the censorship would favor economic and political interests of the censor. That said, the shape of what ”anti vaxx” conspiracy theorists say also reflects their political and economic interests. It’s not merely an academic debate about facts Science denialism is primarily motivated by extra scientific concerns as Naomi Oreskes shows in The Merchants of Doubt and Why Trust Science?
I personally wouldn’t be weeping if those figures were kicked off platforms but the arguments in favor of it are very specific to direct harm caused by vaccine disinformation leading to deaths whether or not its proponents believe it in good faith. However, I wouldn’t at all discount the concern of a slippery slope as “hate speech”, “misinformation” etc are vague enough to be captured by much more expansive notions of harm as discussed, e.g. in recent proposals in Canada for social media regulation that would give significant powers to government censors to infringe on (likely) protected speech if it fit some nebulous harm. The proposed laws probably wouldn’t pass muster even in Canada, however corporate entities are free to do what they can’t, even in the USA
.. because scientists don’t know .. we are seeing real-time scientists at work.
