Anecdotes abound, when this is really not the sort of debate that should be conducted using anecdotes (cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-a

Anecdotes abound, when this is really not the sort of debate that should be conducted using anecdotes (cf. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chin...). Sure, some societies have uncensored social media and wind up with a lot of people believing that vaccines are a Bill Gates conspiracy, occasionally leading to real harm. Other societies, as a downstream effect of uncensored social media, wind up with racial pogroms, as a commenter elsewhere in here pointed out. On the other hand, some societies with censorship wind up totalitarian hellholes, and some societies didn't even have social media at all and still had racial pogroms (whether initiated by local word of mouth, or the local counterpart of the same elites that presumably would be in charge of censoring social media if there were social media). The existence of these anecdotes tells us nothing about whether we would be better off with or without uncensored social media, or whether some other more subtle solution than censoring or not censoring would lead to better outcomes. So, which one is more likely? Which one has worse consequences in expectation? This argument can only be done quantitatively, and as far as I know nobody has produced the numbers that we would need to do that. We might as well try to determine whether private possession of bladed objects should be permitted based on a comparing whether an emotional account of a marital stabbing, defense of the cultural value of home cooking or appeal to the value of adults feeling like society trusts them to hurt themselves feels more moving. (If we stop trying to pretend that there is a meaningful utilitarian argument to be had here, though, on an idealistic level, where emotional appeals are properly at home, I'm with the more critical commenters here. Quoting from low culture like video games may be a little tacky, but: "Beware he[sic] who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.")