So there’s no way at all, to your mind, to distinguish millions of shitposts about “The covid vaccine causes infertility, and contains 5G chips” from, for instance, genuine risk information?

We truly are swimming in a world in which nothing is true. Or you are anyway.

I can make up my own mind for my personal opinion but I don't want other people's ideas to be censored. Even if they're factually wrong, it's still OK to share them, I think.

> The covid vaccine causes infertility

The bizarre thing with this hoax, is that it looks like the mRNA vaccine increases swimmer motility.[1] Vaccinated folks should have no issues having babies if, for example, they need to improve their 5G reception at home.

[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781360

You take an extreme example (5G chips in vaccines) to support the idea that we can draw a line in the sand and say what's true & what's false. But if you take an example closer to the line, things start to become less clear. Are masks useful to the general public? If you said "yes" a year ago, you would've been censored for spreading misinformation. If you said "no" yesterday, you would've been censored for spreading misinformation.

Anyway, if you think it's so easy to do a good job censoring information, why don't you point to a single example where that worked out? Just one is sufficient. It's okay, I'll wait.

You take a moderate example to support the idea that we cannot nevertheless have a threshold where we can be sure that something is false. But while we cannot clearly say where the land ends and the ocean begins, there are large swaths of places that we can positively identify as ocean.

The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship is easy.

Here's a claim that's definitely in the ocean - Mohammed is the messenger of God. Do you want that claim banned from the internet because it's clearly false (God doesn't even exist)? Do you want to exterminate Islamic faith?

Just because it's wrong, doesn't mean nobody should believe it or be exposed to it.

That particular statement is in fact neither known to be true nor false for some definitions of the Muslim God, since there is no secular evidence for the existence nor non-existence of God for those definitions of the Muslim God.

But I agree with the point you are trying to make, that many people have false beliefs crucial to a societal institutions that cannot realistically be suppressed by heavy-handed censorship without also destroying meaning and satisfaction for many people, and also the society itself. And of course, holy texts often contradict themselves, yet some consider all of it true.

However, you are arguing against a strawman, since OP never claimed to have a solution, nor even that censorship was the appropriate response, not do I claim that either.

> However, you are arguing against a strawman, since OP never claimed to have a solution, nor even that censorship was the appropriate response, not do I claim that either.

OP strongly implied that it's easy to distinguish which claims should be censored and which claims should not be censored. This is complete fantasy.

They didn't claim anything that strong. They claimed that some COVID misinformation is easily identifiable as false. They were silent on many other statements, whereas you think they said that all statements are easily distinguishable as true or false. Indeed, it's complete fantasy, but you're arguing against a strawman.

> The OP never claimed to have an appropriate solution so I don't know what you are talking about regarding them thinking censorship is easy.

Disagree. This is what OP said, among other things: "We absolutely can, as a society, say that (for example) misinformation about vaccines, where we are dealing with matters of fact, is not on a level with actual vaccine science. This is not really up for honest debate."

You are confusing the identification of certain statements as false (which is easy for some things), with the enforcement of censorship (which OP does not claim to have).

Ok. Allow me to rephrase: can you point to a single example where an entity was given power to decide which statements are false (for censorship-related purposes) and subsequently did a good job? To be specific, I mean doing a good job of identifying which statements are false and which statements are true.

Well, that's not something the OP has a good answer to, and they admit it. In fact, they've written,

> Is censorship the best way to deal with it? Probably not. But we do need to recognise this as a problem as well as getting het up about giant internet platforms deplatforming people.

> make no claims to be one of the group of enlightened ubermensch who should be able to decide for the rest. Neither do I argue that such people exist or are necessary.