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Not just that. Knowledgeable academics who argued that the costs of lockdowns in schools would far outweigh any possible benefit were suppressed by non-scienti

Not just that. Knowledgeable academics who argued that the costs of lockdowns in schools would far outweigh any possible benefit were suppressed by non-scientists. All talk of vaccine side effects was labelled misinformation and suppressed, even when accompanied with legitimate and accepted studies. Etc. The only common thread between all the possible examples of censorship - from side effects to lockdown effectiveness to the lab-leak theory to the US role in funding GOF research at the WIV - seemed to be that unless you spoke the narrative of the day then you were dangerous to society. Fully unpacking the irony there would take a book. Many books have been written about this kind of censorship, because suppressing conversation like this never leads anywhere good. It's an enduring and central theme of damn-near all the top dystopian fiction.

chasd00 2y ago
It was even here in HN a community of pretty normal people. Remember the discussions of Sweden’s approach to lockdowns? Any mention of it and you were shouted down and blood was surely going to run in the streets of Sweden by dawn the next day. I lost a lot of faith in the HN community then. The pandemic and the compliance and the us vs. them mentality really opened by eyes. It’s how terrible things happen, people will just do what their told by some perceived authority no matter what.
- cempaka 2y ago
  One particular big name commenter here was still defending mass firings under the OSHA mandate in late 2022 / early 2023.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  HN, to it's credit, at least permitted dissent without systematic bans for going against whatever was the officially blessed narrative of the day.
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    It does however downvotes start to gray out comments and HN is still prone to brigading.
    - 3np 2y ago
      I don't see how that points to presence of systematic bans.
      - firesteelrain 2y ago
        I didn’t say anything about bans.
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    How would you know that? My account was banned.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      I dissented regularly and vehemently and was not banned on HN.
- tensor 2y ago
  People disagreeing with you is not censorship.
tensor 2y ago
I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored? Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate, as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns and especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media. The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously, but it wasn't censored. I remember several high profile articles on it. Your narrative sounds like some fantasy.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. It's a google search away friend. I'll source one thing for you though, pick whatever you think is craziest. > How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored? How would I know? Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft, Reddit, Apple, Pinterest, Spotify and Amazon, among many more, have admitted to removing content. Many of those cases were extremely high profile. Facebook removed and suppressed nearly 200 million posts [0], many of them true. Twitter censored scientists for saying true things that the Biden Admin didn't like, as documented in the Twitter Files (which were heavily smeared as a "nothingburger"). [1] > Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate It shouldn't have been. Aerosol scientists emphasized early on that respiratory activities like talking and breathing produce tiny droplets (aerosols) that can stay suspended in the air, potentially spreading the virus. This knowledge should have been applied sooner. Air purification in classrooms and nursing homes could have been a thing almost immediately, but even now it hasn't been seriously pursued. (Outside the top private schools anyway.) > as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns For all the debate, they still got rammed through pretty much everywhere. Since then, everything that many people had been saying came true, and now we have a generation of children that teachers are describing as "feral" with the most genuine concern. Excess cancer deaths, widespread mental health crises, a huge transfer of wealth to the rich, economic hardship for many, a huge rise in domestic violence. The people who predicted this were smeared seven ways to Sunday, and you'd have to be in a strange bubble to have missed it. Perhaps the censorship worked after all? > especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Again, this has been explicitly acknowledged as a topic which got heavily censored, by the companies that did the censoring no less. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc all did it, and all report being asked to remove things that "could be seen as" going against whatever position was du jour. > Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media. Some information moved a lot faster than other info... Because of acknowledged mass suppression and censorship. There's no damn good reason that I and many others could take a glance through Daszak's paper and recognize it as bullshit immediately, but it took years to be acknowledged as such by media and academia. It also took a long time for those Whatsapp chats where top scientists admit to being told to say that a lab-leak was "impossible", even though they suspected it was quite likely. To this day, the conversation about funding GOF research has not had its time in the sun. > The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously Serious people took it seriously from day one. There was never a good reason not to, and many good reasons to demand an immediate investigation of WIV, GOF research in general, and the role of our own money funding the exact type of research that could create a coronavirus like this. > I remember several high profile articles on it. So do I, and I remember them being pretty easy to see for the hack jobs they were as well. The NYT had a genuinely good one after like a year and a half, long over due. > Your narrative sounds like some fantasy. Again, you can name one specific thing that I have claimed and ask me to source it for you; I won't do everything. All of this is easily findable. I didn't even get into some of the gnarlier stuff, like how all across the West nursing homes were seeded with sick patients resulting in a huge number of early deaths. That was a suppressed story you might have missed, even though there were bits and pieces of it written up. Again, there's been very little accountability for that since. What's pure fantasy is that we had some sort of reasoned debate, followed best-practice protocols, and came to measured decisions. * * * 0 - https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170 https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170 1 - https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-files-platform-suppressed-valid-200142382.html?guccounter=1 https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-files-platform-suppressed...

chasd00 2y ago

It was even here in HN a community of pretty normal people. Remember the discussions of Sweden’s approach to lockdowns? Any mention of it and you were shouted down and blood was surely going to run in the streets of Sweden by dawn the next day. I lost a lot of faith in the HN community then. The pandemic and the compliance and the us vs. them mentality really opened by eyes. It’s how terrible things happen, people will just do what their told by some perceived authority no matter what.

cempaka 2y ago
One particular big name commenter here was still defending mass firings under the OSHA mandate in late 2022 / early 2023.
lupusreal 2y ago
HN, to it's credit, at least permitted dissent without systematic bans for going against whatever was the officially blessed narrative of the day.
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  It does however downvotes start to gray out comments and HN is still prone to brigading.
  - 3np 2y ago
    I don't see how that points to presence of systematic bans.
    - firesteelrain 2y ago
      I didn’t say anything about bans.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  How would you know that? My account was banned.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    I dissented regularly and vehemently and was not banned on HN.
tensor 2y ago
People disagreeing with you is not censorship.

tensor 2y ago

I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored? Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate, as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns and especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media. The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously, but it wasn't censored. I remember several high profile articles on it. Your narrative sounds like some fantasy.

mandmandam 2y ago
> I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. It's a google search away friend. I'll source one thing for you though, pick whatever you think is craziest. > How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored? How would I know? Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft, Reddit, Apple, Pinterest, Spotify and Amazon, among many more, have admitted to removing content. Many of those cases were extremely high profile. Facebook removed and suppressed nearly 200 million posts [0], many of them true. Twitter censored scientists for saying true things that the Biden Admin didn't like, as documented in the Twitter Files (which were heavily smeared as a "nothingburger"). [1] > Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate It shouldn't have been. Aerosol scientists emphasized early on that respiratory activities like talking and breathing produce tiny droplets (aerosols) that can stay suspended in the air, potentially spreading the virus. This knowledge should have been applied sooner. Air purification in classrooms and nursing homes could have been a thing almost immediately, but even now it hasn't been seriously pursued. (Outside the top private schools anyway.) > as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns For all the debate, they still got rammed through pretty much everywhere. Since then, everything that many people had been saying came true, and now we have a generation of children that teachers are describing as "feral" with the most genuine concern. Excess cancer deaths, widespread mental health crises, a huge transfer of wealth to the rich, economic hardship for many, a huge rise in domestic violence. The people who predicted this were smeared seven ways to Sunday, and you'd have to be in a strange bubble to have missed it. Perhaps the censorship worked after all? > especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Again, this has been explicitly acknowledged as a topic which got heavily censored, by the companies that did the censoring no less. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc all did it, and all report being asked to remove things that "could be seen as" going against whatever position was du jour. > Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media. Some information moved a lot faster than other info... Because of acknowledged mass suppression and censorship. There's no damn good reason that I and many others could take a glance through Daszak's paper and recognize it as bullshit immediately, but it took years to be acknowledged as such by media and academia. It also took a long time for those Whatsapp chats where top scientists admit to being told to say that a lab-leak was "impossible", even though they suspected it was quite likely. To this day, the conversation about funding GOF research has not had its time in the sun. > The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously Serious people took it seriously from day one. There was never a good reason not to, and many good reasons to demand an immediate investigation of WIV, GOF research in general, and the role of our own money funding the exact type of research that could create a coronavirus like this. > I remember several high profile articles on it. So do I, and I remember them being pretty easy to see for the hack jobs they were as well. The NYT had a genuinely good one after like a year and a half, long over due. > Your narrative sounds like some fantasy. Again, you can name one specific thing that I have claimed and ask me to source it for you; I won't do everything. All of this is easily findable. I didn't even get into some of the gnarlier stuff, like how all across the West nursing homes were seeded with sick patients resulting in a huge number of early deaths. That was a suppressed story you might have missed, even though there were bits and pieces of it written up. Again, there's been very little accountability for that since. What's pure fantasy is that we had some sort of reasoned debate, followed best-practice protocols, and came to measured decisions. * * * 0 - https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170 https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170 1 - https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-files-platform-suppressed-valid-200142382.html?guccounter=1 https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-files-platform-suppressed...