the_toast_is_gone

It's like they took all the wrong lessons from their parents who made them eat their vegetables and yelled at them for dressing inappropriately. And the "Bible-thumping fire-and-brimstone preachers." And Vance's silly "childless cat ladies" comment.

If they were pushed away by zealotry, what makes them think it would appeal to anyone else?

Yes, it does apply, because the entirety of what I've posted below was classified as "misinformation" and thus removed under pressure from the government. That is censorship. The Supreme Court found you cannot be forced to not publish information from a source the government doesn't like. The scope of the censorship was specific to social media - again, this information was deleted by Facebook under pressure from the government.

Simply because the government believes the benefits outweigh the risks does not mean people shouldn't be informed of the risks; that would be censorship, which was what the government did to Facebook and Twitter.

My point there was to point out the efficacy claims were not as straightforward as the media claimed; government didn't like that truth, so it was censored.

You're splitting hairs on the remaining points. The point is that the link between surgical masks and the spread of diseases was not what the media claimed. The government didn't want that to be known, and thus it was removed from social media.

I'm not sure if you're willfully misinterpreting and downplaying my statements, but the lengths you'll go to defend censorship and pointless imprisonment are startling. A society should function on the basis of doing good so that good may come, not doing bad so that good may come. I don't see what's so controversial about that. I'm only producing information that's been published already. You're the one defending what would rightly be called government overreach while refusing to explain what the distinction between is and fascism is.

Again, your arguments could be used to justify Trump removing pro-trans and pro-immigration information from social media. I don't want anyone to have that power.

I don't know why you're accepting a boot on your neck. The Supreme Court is clear that the government cannot regulate the speech of an organization simply because they don't like the content. If you would like to give the government the right to determine what is and isn't true and thus permissible on social media, that would mean Trump could rightly censor whatever claims/information he wanted - say, trans rights promotion, immigration assistance, and the like.

Also, here's some information about what was being censored:

• The link between vaccines and thrombosis
• The vaccines were not as effective as they were stated by the media - in fact, despite this article's hair-splitting, you can still find a number of sites claiming this.
• Surgical masks aren't particularly effective at stopping infections, at least partly due to poor use of them. If you give something to the general public and they cannot use it effectively, it is not an effective tool.
• Another source on the masks matter.

I'm glad we're clear that you think the ends justify the means.

So it's okay to force private companies to remove it if the government says it's false?

I'm not sure why you're insisting on not actually reading the document but alright:

On March 14, 2021, Mr. Flaherty emailed a Facebook executive (whose name we’ve redacted as a courtesy) with the subject line “You are hiding the ball” and a link to a Washington Post article about Facebook’s own research into “the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy,” as the paper put it. “I think there is a misunderstanding,” the executive wrote back. “I don’t think this is a misunderstanding,” Mr. Flaherty replied. “We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy—period. . . . We want to know that you’re trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game. . . . This would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us.”

Emphasis mine is the government explaining the need for, and the demanding, censorship.

Next paragraph:

On March 21, after failing to placate Mr. Flaherty, the Facebook executive sent an email detailing the company’s planned policy changes. They included “removing vaccine misinformation” and “reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation.” Facebook characterized this material as “often-true content” that “can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.” Facebook pledged to “remove these Groups, Pages, and Accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content.”

This paragraph details how Facebook, under pressure from the government, agreed to remove information. That is, the government censored information. If you'd like to argue that a private individual being coerced into deleting something isn't censorship, then perhaps you'd say the same about a newspaper being forced to not run a story about a government killing?

And for the sake of getting further context, let's look at the next few paragraphs:

In that exchange, Mr. Flaherty demanded to know what Facebook was doing to “limit the spread of viral content” on WhatsApp, a private message app, especially “given its reach in immigrant communities and communities of color.” The company responded three weeks later with a lengthy list of promises.

Further explaining government demands for censorship.

On April 9, Mr. Flaherty asked “what actions and changes you’re making to ensure . . . you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse.” He faulted the company for insufficient zeal in earlier efforts to control political speech: “In the electoral context, you tested and deployed an algorithmic shift that promoted quality news and information about the election. . . . You only did this, however, after an election that you helped increase skepticism in, and an insurrection which was plotted, in large part, by your platform. And then you turned it back off. I want some assurances, based in data, that you are not doing the same thing again here.” The executive’s response: “Understood.”

The government, again, demands censorship.

On April 23, Mr. Flaherty sent the executive an internal memo that he claimed had been circulating in the White House. It asserts that “Facebook plays a major role in the spread of COVID vaccine misinformation” and accuses the company of, among other things, “failure to monitor events hosting anti-vaccine and COVID disinformation” and “directing attention to COVID-skeptics/anti-vaccine ‘trusted’ messengers.

More pressure from the government.

On May 10, the executive sent Mr. Flaherty a list of steps Facebook had taken “to increase vaccine acceptance.” Mr. Flaherty scoffed, “Hard to take any of this seriously when you’re actively promoting anti-vaccine pages in search,” and linked to an NBC reporter’s tweet. The executive wrote back: “Thanks Rob—both of the accounts featured in this tweet have been removed from Instagram entirely for breaking our policies.”

And this is a very clear example of censorship happening.

I think you get the idea. If you'd like to dispute what the article says, why don't you read it yourself?

Literally the first paragraph from the article by the US Congress:

Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily. The emails emerged Jan. 6 in the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden, a free-speech case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and four private plaintiffs represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

And now you admit that the ends justify the means?

I'm talking about the real deal communists like Antifa and social media addicts - the kinds whose every interaction with their political opponents is hostile because they're "the oppressors" or "colonists," instigate fights, burn down cities, loot stores in the chaos, cheer on the recent increased crime and failing businesses because it serves their motives, want to overthrow the government to install a figure who will centrally plan the economy, and lie, cheat, and steal at every opportunity because anything is acceptable as long as it ushers in the glorious revolution that will somehow let them not work at all when all is said and done.

Really? That sounds like what you're saying: it's acceptable to censor information, criminalize going outsid and not wearing a piece of cloth if it's for a good cause. Namely, it's okay to do these things if fewer people die of a disease. This is, in fact, justifying the means by pointing to the goal (the ends). Can you explain the distinction between what you're saying and how I've explained it?

So in other words... The ends justify the means?