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When talking about Internet censorship, it is countries like China that first come to mind. But in fact, censorship is everywhere on today's Internet, and there seems to be no escape.
The most recent example is perhaps the "COVID lab leak theory". Facebook has kept it under heavy censorship in the past one and a half years, labeling it as a "conspiracy theory" and banning advocates' accounts. It wasn't until several weeks ago that Facebook lift the ban, likely due to the US government's new-found interest in this theory.
This illustrates an important point about censorship. When X is censored (be it "conspiracy theory", "hate speech", "racism" or "child pornography"), it always implies the existence of an entity that has somehow acquired unchallengeable authority in deciding what is X and what isn't. This is a big problem, because as free thinkers, we never want to grant such authority to anybody. We never want to allow anybody to make such decision on behalf of us.
It is even more ridiculous when it comes to the "lab leak theory". With both sides of the argument still looking for substantial evidence to back themselves up, Facebook (and many other main stream media) had somehow decided, that the advocates are spreading a "conspiracy theory". Who gave Facebook such authority? Does Facebook have a super intelligent team of virologists that had figured it all out before everybody else? What a joke.
Under censorship, funny things happen when the censoring authority changes its mind. Recently, when the main stream media began picking up the lab leak theory, the highest-vote Youtube comment under such report would typically read something like "so we are allowed to have this opinion now? how so generous". This is the black humor of today's Internet.
I am against any kind of censorship, not because I am in sympathy with some of the outlandish things out there on the Internet, but because I am disgusted by the idea of an authority single-handedly determining what is or is not outlandish, especially when such authority itself is likely to turn out to be outlandishly greedy and corrupt.
