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Yes, by not addressing that I put myself in the trap where I was forced to respond to it anyway in a later comment. So, in order to avoid repeating myself, I b

Yes, by not addressing that I put myself in the trap where I was forced to respond to it anyway in a later comment. So, in order to avoid repeating myself, I believe I addressed that notion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063309 In short, I am not saying that the truth will necessarily "win out" over the false. Rather I am saying - and this was my fault for not being clear enough - that I reject the notion that we should try to pick a side to suppress. Because the same part of human nature that leads to rampant spread of disinformation is the part of human nature that tries to decide what the capital-T Truth is. So, my personal belief system - and I know how unpopular this viewpoint is, especially in current times - is just let them have at it. Remove blatant calls for violence, and nothing more. ("nothing more" should include racism and other unpopular beliefs, by the way, in case my viewpoint isn't controversial enough thus far). So, saying "We should go out and attack $GROUP" should be removed. But saying "I think $GROUP is inferior due to highly discredited scientific-seeming reasons" should not be removed, because however wrong or distasteful it is, it's not directly advocating for violence. Similarly, something like holocaust denial or anti-vax beliefs, etc should similarly not be suppressed. Again, I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I hope that helps you understand my thoughts on these issues.

kiba 6y ago
OK. I guess we should let anti-vaxers spread disinformation causing a whole bunch of people dying unnecessarily because people believed it.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  I agree anti Vaxers are ridiculous. But just to play devils advocate. What if there ever was a dangerous vaccine out there, wouldn’t we want people to be able to speak out? Honestly I don’t have any solutions. I don’t like either option.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    There indeed were a few dangerous vaccines, about three generations ago. That's exactly why we have the elaborate clinical trial system today: they stop potentially unsafe vaccines all the time. A large fraction of the COVID vaccines might go this way. Nobody is against banning unsafe vaccines, but some are for banning people from spreading baseless, conspiratorial anti-vax bullshit.
    - mrfusion 6y ago
      Exactly. But who are we trusting to tell the difference between bullshit and not? Would you trust youtube employees with that?
      - knzhou 6y ago
        No, which is exactly why I'm happy they defer to the WHO. I don't trust the WHO unconditionally either, but I trust it much much more than David Icke.
        mrfusion 6y ago
        But will youtube defer to the right group on every issue? Is there always a right group? This issue will pass but now they have a precedent.
    - mirimir 6y ago
      There have been issues more recently with vaccine safety. Or at least, there were enough lawsuits to start frightening off vaccine manufacturers. Since 1986, however, they've been insulated from lawsuits under federal law:[0] > The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, ..., as amended, created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system. It provides compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines. Even in cases in which such a finding is not made, petitioners may receive compensation through a settlement. > The VICP was established after lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and healthcare providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce vaccination rates. The Program began accepting petitions (also called claims) in 1988. The current anti-vaccination movement began largely over concern that thiomersal preservative in many childhood vaccines was causing autism. Although multiple epidemiological studies indicated that there was no appreciable risk, "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible as a precautionary measure", and it was ~gone by 2001.[1] 0) https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/about/index.html https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/about/index.html 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    Right. In general contradiction arises when we try to prevent people from doing stupid things. It becomes very difficult to maintain a logically consistent view on what's okay to censor and what's not. Most of us agree anti-vaxxers are ill-informed and that adopting their beliefs causes people to engage in patterns of behavior (avoiding vaccines) that are not in what we think is their best interest. What about other beliefs? If someone posts a video saying that they don't think seatbelts are effective in preventing injuries during car crashes, should they be suppressed? What about someone who claims that vaping is safe and popularizes the practice? Do we ban that? It's easy to pick a few almost-universally hated groups and rally against them: racists, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers. Few things are that cut-and-dry. And watching the widespread rise of "benevolent censorship" wrt COVID-19 has really shown me how far we can take the idea of "protect people from information that could harm them". For example, I recently submitted a highly controversial 7500+ word blog post that advocated for ending lockdown in the US. I got some matters of scientific fact wrong (and have since addressed or am currently working on addressing those), i.e. things like accounting for the phenomenom of "overshoot". Some sections probably did not give a perfectly fair view of "each side" and could be/were criticized as being cherry-picked. And I think I got a lot of things very right. I've now had 9 people e-mail me in the last 24 hours saying that they tried to share my post on Facebook/Messenger and that the entire domain is now blocked for violating the community guidelines. Is that something worth banning? It advocates for a position that could easily be argued will lead to death, and therefore reading it could kill people. So it's a very easy argument to make, if you take the position that we should suppress "harmful" information. As I said at the start of this thread, I basically reject the entire concept of "disinformation" for that reason; it inevitably gets used to suppress even the most good-faith and well-researched (or in my case, somewhat-well-researched :P) arguments. Therefore I think the entire concept is inherently dangerous to a free society. Okay, that's enough rambling for one night. I'll let everyone else duke it out :)
    - pacala 6y ago
      Furthermore, there is zero guarantee that the censors won't eventually develop a taste for antivaxxing themselves, and now any information about potential benefits of vaccines is actively suppressed.
- jackcosgrove 6y ago
  Refusing medical treatment for children on religious grounds is legal to varying degrees in 43 states. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/parents-beliefs-about-medicine-child-abuse#1 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/parents-beliefs-about... Anti-vaxing is not an organized religion but I could see organized religions adopting anti-vaxing beliefs.
rowanG077 6y ago
I completely agree. For the simple fact that no human or organisation can be trusted with the power to silence anyone or any group. I Think this should apply to functional social monopolys as well. YouTube/facebook/instagram etc shouldn't be allowed to remove content they deem untrue.
- streb-lo 6y ago
  HN has a monopoly on discussion between people with (slightly) above-average critical thinking skills. Should we ban their moderation as well? 15 years ago the idea of an internet video monopoly didn't even exist and if it did no one would have cared. What you are suggesting is impossible to enforce or even reason about.
  - jstanley 6y ago
    If HN moderators started censoring posts because they disagreed with them, or thought the ideas were "too dangerous" (rather than just because they were spam) then yeah people would start complaining about it.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    I don't think HN has a monopoly on discussion between people with (slightly) above-average critical thinking skills. Many sub-reddits fit that definition as well. I don't follow how this would be impossible to enforce. The person whose content on youtube is removed for example is going to complain. It's dead simple to slap youtube with a couple million dollar fine for such things.
mirimir 6y ago
> Rather I am saying - and this was my fault for not being clear enough - that I reject the notion that we should try to pick a side to suppress. Because the same part of human nature that leads to rampant spread of disinformation is the part of human nature that tries to decide what the capital-T Truth is. Yes, we really can't have it both ways. Either we have free speech for everyone, or we have censorship. There are exceptions, of course: calls to violence, libel against non-public people, and so on. And yes, also inciting panic by crying "fire" falsely in public places. But I believe that's distinguishable from spreading "fake news". The problem with censorship is needing to trust censors. And even if we have honest censors, how do we know what the "truth" is? Do we trust "authorities"? That seems iffy, given how often we've learned that they've been dishonest or just plain wrong. Also, authoritarians always start with the edge cases. And then they widen the scope. By the time your position -- which always seemed so reasonable -- becomes unacceptable, it's too late.
- me_again 6y ago
  Isn't spreading dangerously false information about a viral pandemic similar to shouting "fire" in a theatre? I'm not sure it's always so easy to distinguish that actively dangerous conduct from fake news. Not that this difficulty means we shouldn't try.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    The "shouting 'fire' in a theatre" meme comes from a case where the Supreme Court used the Espionage Act to restrict speech because the speech in question didn't sufficiently support entering into a World War and advocated against the draft. Not exactly the best way to convince people that restricting speech is actually good.
    - wyattpeak 6y ago
      The fact that you need to explain that sort of demonstrates that it isn't relevant to the use of the argument. Good arguments can come from poor sources. Most people agree that shouting fire in a crowded theatre is the sort of speech which should be restricted, wherever the argument came from.
Frondo 6y ago
So, so far I haven't seen anyone on here take the strong free speech absolutist position -- that nothing should be censored ever, including calls to violence. I've seen several comments that basically say "don't censor in general, but do remove calls to violence," so that seems like it's not a controversial opinion at least in this discussion. Why are calls to violence bad, but spreading misinformation about a pandemic (whether it's that it is a hoax, that it is not transmissible, or that you can cure it by drinking bleach) is okay? It seems to me that, if you're saying calls to violence can be censored because they will inspire people to act badly, then you've crossed the line into saying people can't be trusted to act appropriately. Why ban that, but not misinformation about the pandemic?
- BurningCycles 6y ago
  >Why are calls to violence bad, but spreading misinformation about a pandemic How do you know what is 'misinformation' ? WHO claimed that face masks were worthless, now you are forced to wear them in lots of places. WHO also claimed that there was no human to human transmission of COVID-19, etc. The powers that be will not stop spreading misinformation when it suits them, they just want no one to be able to question it. The right to question is something we can't give up just to avoid bad actors.
  - elbear 6y ago
    Why do you assume that the "powers that be will not stop spreading misinformation" like they do it on purpose? Could it not be that this is a very complex issue and they were simply wrong in the first place? More data came in and they revised their position.
    - wnoise 6y ago
      They certainly were spreading it on purpose. What's unknown is whether they knew it was misinformation at the time. Perhaps they thought this was a good way to manage supply shocks and keep masks flowing to medical workers. Or perhaps they truly thought masks were useless. That's hard to believe, but not impossible. But they wouldn't have backed off as quickly without pushback from others taking the opposite position that masks were critical. And at the time, that was contrary to the officially espoused position by both CDC and WHO. Even now WHO haven't fully reversed course, they have only stopped anti-recommending face masks as hard. Banning spreading this countervailing opinion would have been a grave mistake. WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2... > If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19. CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si... > In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.
hef19898 6y ago
Calls for violance can be, and are, very subtile. Just removing open calls for violance wouldn't change a bit, propaganda doesn't work that way. Nor does psychology. So in the end, both of your examples about $Group can lead to violance against that group. EDIT: Typos
- ryankemper 6y ago
  Yes, but I think trying to map out indirect violence gets into very dangerous territory. So, that's why I draw the line at "directly" advocating violence. Of course, the lines as always get blurry. To use a random example that comes to mind, when Kathy Griffin posted the severed head of Trump - was that a direct call to violence? That's a tough one to answer. My first intuition is that it does cross the line, but I could very easily see an argument that it's not. So unfortunately there will always be that difficulty, unless we committed to an absolutist position of not removing ANY speech. I drink a lot of the kool-aid, and even I don't go that far.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    > not removing ANY speech. That causes genocides to happen though -- are you okay with that or did you not know
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      Sorry, can you clarify? Are you saying removing speech causes genocides, or not removing speech at all?
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      No, people with guns and uniforms cause genocide. People with pens and typewriters have never harmed a hair on anyone's head. To disagree is to argue that human beings are nothing but programmable devices. If that's your position, fine, but we'll have to disagree.
      - hef19898 6y ago
CathedralBorrow 6y ago
> Remove blatant calls for violence So you are in favor of censorship, just with different parameters.
cutemonster 6y ago
> Remove blatant calls for violence, Not ok to kill people via violence, but ok to do the same by (contributing to) spreading a pandemic?
tw04 6y ago
So we should expect schools to teach our schools that the earth is flat, and the earth is round, and hope the kids pick the right option? Or where exactly do you draw the line in "we shouldn't suppress speech, just because it's provably false?"
- ryankemper 6y ago
  Just saw this comment. Saying "don't censor expression of opinions on online platforms" is not saying "teach creationism" in schools, nor "teach that the earth is flat". In other words I think that's very much a red herring.

kiba 6y ago

OK. I guess we should let anti-vaxers spread disinformation causing a whole bunch of people dying unnecessarily because people believed it.

mrfusion 6y ago
I agree anti Vaxers are ridiculous. But just to play devils advocate. What if there ever was a dangerous vaccine out there, wouldn’t we want people to be able to speak out? Honestly I don’t have any solutions. I don’t like either option.
- knzhou 6y ago
  There indeed were a few dangerous vaccines, about three generations ago. That's exactly why we have the elaborate clinical trial system today: they stop potentially unsafe vaccines all the time. A large fraction of the COVID vaccines might go this way. Nobody is against banning unsafe vaccines, but some are for banning people from spreading baseless, conspiratorial anti-vax bullshit.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    Exactly. But who are we trusting to tell the difference between bullshit and not? Would you trust youtube employees with that?
    - knzhou 6y ago
      No, which is exactly why I'm happy they defer to the WHO. I don't trust the WHO unconditionally either, but I trust it much much more than David Icke.
      - mrfusion 6y ago
        But will youtube defer to the right group on every issue? Is there always a right group? This issue will pass but now they have a precedent.
  - mirimir 6y ago
    There have been issues more recently with vaccine safety. Or at least, there were enough lawsuits to start frightening off vaccine manufacturers. Since 1986, however, they've been insulated from lawsuits under federal law:[0] > The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, ..., as amended, created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system. It provides compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines. Even in cases in which such a finding is not made, petitioners may receive compensation through a settlement. > The VICP was established after lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and healthcare providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce vaccination rates. The Program began accepting petitions (also called claims) in 1988. The current anti-vaccination movement began largely over concern that thiomersal preservative in many childhood vaccines was causing autism. Although multiple epidemiological studies indicated that there was no appreciable risk, "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible as a precautionary measure", and it was ~gone by 2001.[1] 0) https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/about/index.html https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/about/index.html 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines
- ryankemper 6y ago
  Right. In general contradiction arises when we try to prevent people from doing stupid things. It becomes very difficult to maintain a logically consistent view on what's okay to censor and what's not. Most of us agree anti-vaxxers are ill-informed and that adopting their beliefs causes people to engage in patterns of behavior (avoiding vaccines) that are not in what we think is their best interest. What about other beliefs? If someone posts a video saying that they don't think seatbelts are effective in preventing injuries during car crashes, should they be suppressed? What about someone who claims that vaping is safe and popularizes the practice? Do we ban that? It's easy to pick a few almost-universally hated groups and rally against them: racists, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers. Few things are that cut-and-dry. And watching the widespread rise of "benevolent censorship" wrt COVID-19 has really shown me how far we can take the idea of "protect people from information that could harm them". For example, I recently submitted a highly controversial 7500+ word blog post that advocated for ending lockdown in the US. I got some matters of scientific fact wrong (and have since addressed or am currently working on addressing those), i.e. things like accounting for the phenomenom of "overshoot". Some sections probably did not give a perfectly fair view of "each side" and could be/were criticized as being cherry-picked. And I think I got a lot of things very right. I've now had 9 people e-mail me in the last 24 hours saying that they tried to share my post on Facebook/Messenger and that the entire domain is now blocked for violating the community guidelines. Is that something worth banning? It advocates for a position that could easily be argued will lead to death, and therefore reading it could kill people. So it's a very easy argument to make, if you take the position that we should suppress "harmful" information. As I said at the start of this thread, I basically reject the entire concept of "disinformation" for that reason; it inevitably gets used to suppress even the most good-faith and well-researched (or in my case, somewhat-well-researched :P) arguments. Therefore I think the entire concept is inherently dangerous to a free society. Okay, that's enough rambling for one night. I'll let everyone else duke it out :)
  - pacala 6y ago
    Furthermore, there is zero guarantee that the censors won't eventually develop a taste for antivaxxing themselves, and now any information about potential benefits of vaccines is actively suppressed.
jackcosgrove 6y ago
Refusing medical treatment for children on religious grounds is legal to varying degrees in 43 states. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/parents-beliefs-about-medicine-child-abuse#1 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/parents-beliefs-about... Anti-vaxing is not an organized religion but I could see organized religions adopting anti-vaxing beliefs.

rowanG077 6y ago

I completely agree. For the simple fact that no human or organisation can be trusted with the power to silence anyone or any group. I Think this should apply to functional social monopolys as well. YouTube/facebook/instagram etc shouldn't be allowed to remove content they deem untrue.

streb-lo 6y ago
HN has a monopoly on discussion between people with (slightly) above-average critical thinking skills. Should we ban their moderation as well? 15 years ago the idea of an internet video monopoly didn't even exist and if it did no one would have cared. What you are suggesting is impossible to enforce or even reason about.
- jstanley 6y ago
  If HN moderators started censoring posts because they disagreed with them, or thought the ideas were "too dangerous" (rather than just because they were spam) then yeah people would start complaining about it.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  I don't think HN has a monopoly on discussion between people with (slightly) above-average critical thinking skills. Many sub-reddits fit that definition as well. I don't follow how this would be impossible to enforce. The person whose content on youtube is removed for example is going to complain. It's dead simple to slap youtube with a couple million dollar fine for such things.

mirimir 6y ago

> Rather I am saying - and this was my fault for not being clear enough - that I reject the notion that we should try to pick a side to suppress. Because the same part of human nature that leads to rampant spread of disinformation is the part of human nature that tries to decide what the capital-T Truth is. Yes, we really can't have it both ways. Either we have free speech for everyone, or we have censorship. There are exceptions, of course: calls to violence, libel against non-public people, and so on. And yes, also inciting panic by crying "fire" falsely in public places. But I believe that's distinguishable from spreading "fake news". The problem with censorship is needing to trust censors. And even if we have honest censors, how do we know what the "truth" is? Do we trust "authorities"? That seems iffy, given how often we've learned that they've been dishonest or just plain wrong. Also, authoritarians always start with the edge cases. And then they widen the scope. By the time your position -- which always seemed so reasonable -- becomes unacceptable, it's too late.

me_again 6y ago
Isn't spreading dangerously false information about a viral pandemic similar to shouting "fire" in a theatre? I'm not sure it's always so easy to distinguish that actively dangerous conduct from fake news. Not that this difficulty means we shouldn't try.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  The "shouting 'fire' in a theatre" meme comes from a case where the Supreme Court used the Espionage Act to restrict speech because the speech in question didn't sufficiently support entering into a World War and advocated against the draft. Not exactly the best way to convince people that restricting speech is actually good.
  - wyattpeak 6y ago
    The fact that you need to explain that sort of demonstrates that it isn't relevant to the use of the argument. Good arguments can come from poor sources. Most people agree that shouting fire in a crowded theatre is the sort of speech which should be restricted, wherever the argument came from.

Frondo 6y ago

So, so far I haven't seen anyone on here take the strong free speech absolutist position -- that nothing should be censored ever, including calls to violence. I've seen several comments that basically say "don't censor in general, but do remove calls to violence," so that seems like it's not a controversial opinion at least in this discussion. Why are calls to violence bad, but spreading misinformation about a pandemic (whether it's that it is a hoax, that it is not transmissible, or that you can cure it by drinking bleach) is okay? It seems to me that, if you're saying calls to violence can be censored because they will inspire people to act badly, then you've crossed the line into saying people can't be trusted to act appropriately. Why ban that, but not misinformation about the pandemic?

BurningCycles 6y ago
>Why are calls to violence bad, but spreading misinformation about a pandemic How do you know what is 'misinformation' ? WHO claimed that face masks were worthless, now you are forced to wear them in lots of places. WHO also claimed that there was no human to human transmission of COVID-19, etc. The powers that be will not stop spreading misinformation when it suits them, they just want no one to be able to question it. The right to question is something we can't give up just to avoid bad actors.
- elbear 6y ago
  Why do you assume that the "powers that be will not stop spreading misinformation" like they do it on purpose? Could it not be that this is a very complex issue and they were simply wrong in the first place? More data came in and they revised their position.
  - wnoise 6y ago
    They certainly were spreading it on purpose. What's unknown is whether they knew it was misinformation at the time. Perhaps they thought this was a good way to manage supply shocks and keep masks flowing to medical workers. Or perhaps they truly thought masks were useless. That's hard to believe, but not impossible. But they wouldn't have backed off as quickly without pushback from others taking the opposite position that masks were critical. And at the time, that was contrary to the officially espoused position by both CDC and WHO. Even now WHO haven't fully reversed course, they have only stopped anti-recommending face masks as hard. Banning spreading this countervailing opinion would have been a grave mistake. WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2... > If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19. CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si... > In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.

hef19898 6y ago

Calls for violance can be, and are, very subtile. Just removing open calls for violance wouldn't change a bit, propaganda doesn't work that way. Nor does psychology. So in the end, both of your examples about $Group can lead to violance against that group. EDIT: Typos

ryankemper 6y ago
Yes, but I think trying to map out indirect violence gets into very dangerous territory. So, that's why I draw the line at "directly" advocating violence. Of course, the lines as always get blurry. To use a random example that comes to mind, when Kathy Griffin posted the severed head of Trump - was that a direct call to violence? That's a tough one to answer. My first intuition is that it does cross the line, but I could very easily see an argument that it's not. So unfortunately there will always be that difficulty, unless we committed to an absolutist position of not removing ANY speech. I drink a lot of the kool-aid, and even I don't go that far.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > not removing ANY speech. That causes genocides to happen though -- are you okay with that or did you not know
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    Sorry, can you clarify? Are you saying removing speech causes genocides, or not removing speech at all?
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    No, people with guns and uniforms cause genocide. People with pens and typewriters have never harmed a hair on anyone's head. To disagree is to argue that human beings are nothing but programmable devices. If that's your position, fine, but we'll have to disagree.
    - hef19898 6y ago

CathedralBorrow 6y ago

> Remove blatant calls for violence So you are in favor of censorship, just with different parameters.

cutemonster 6y ago

> Remove blatant calls for violence, Not ok to kill people via violence, but ok to do the same by (contributing to) spreading a pandemic?

tw04 6y ago

So we should expect schools to teach our schools that the earth is flat, and the earth is round, and hope the kids pick the right option? Or where exactly do you draw the line in "we shouldn't suppress speech, just because it's provably false?"

ryankemper 6y ago
Just saw this comment. Saying "don't censor expression of opinions on online platforms" is not saying "teach creationism" in schools, nor "teach that the earth is flat". In other words I think that's very much a red herring.