This affects more than one person (this was entirely predictable). He was the excuse. That is all. Now that they got "permission" to suppress ideas as they wish, they, surprise! They are.
It wasn't a single person. It was the vast majority of a political party, involving people in government, military, law enforcement, and useful idiots required to fill in a mob.
But all this was perfect for them. They were in need of a reason to shape their content more and control discourse. So congrats on that. We now have a system which controls policies and yet suffers bullying every day --but never mind that, at least we got the bad liars we don't like off the platform.
No? Donald Trump's official Youtube channel is still up and running[0].
And you seriously think the only reason other social media platforms didn't ban Trump for four years is that they needed to "work up the nerve?" Not because he went a little unhinged and started ranting conspiracy theories and undermining the integrity of the election?
This was a case where the (obviously from the start) bad science was propagated, primarily through mainstream media, leading to basically the entire anti-vaccine movement we see today.
The question I think this raises is: can we trust typical journalists to do their due diligence when they make claims about very serious public health issues? In the context of the Wakefield MMR scandal, I think we were shown that the answer is no. Following that, the question is what to do about it.
There are too many one sentence questions on these issues of censorship. I would say they provide no value to the conversation.
I haven't seen the studies you're talking about, but the FDA claims Ivermectin hasn't yet been proven effective, and the WHO says it should only be used in clinical trials. But assuming for the same of argument you're correct, your claim is that the only available source of knowledge about Ivermectin anywhere would have been videos which were deleted from Youtube, making it impossible for anyone to avail themselves of this miracle cure due to Youtube's "censorship", and that there are people who avoided taking any of the other existing and effective COVID vaccines and who died of COVID as a result, and that Youtube is therefore to blame.
That's pure speculation based on an already far-fetched premise.
YouTube deletes Trump video and suspends new uploads: A new video on the president’s account violated YouTube policy on inciting violence. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/1/12/22218757/you...
It doesn't seem like much of a slippery slope if it goes down then comes back up again.
once a precedent is set, a transient acceptance of the action is established as a prior act.
you don't re-cork that genie, that's the whole idea of the slippery slope argument.
forever-more when YouTube considers an action towards something it can always now be said .. "Well in the case of X we did Y."
The 'slippery slope' isn't referring to the actions committed themselves, it's referring to a pattern of acceptance and renormalization that occurs after which biases the decision-making group into further actions of a similar vein.
I'm not from the US thus I have no dog in the race, but even I am fully aware that the rhetoric regarding "it's their platform, they can do what they want" is a very specific realization of the much broader and weaponized argument of "it's their business, they can do what they want" that has been used extensively for years by the political party that supported the incumbent candidate.
The "it's their business, they can do what they want" is an argument used extensicely to whitewash the attack and persecution of minorities and political rivals, as is epitome by the infamous "gay wedding cakes" meme.
So ultimately what this argument illustrates is that there is a political and ideological movement in the US which is adamant in demanding they should be immune to the rules they actively force upon others. Up until that moment, the incumbent's party was very adamant on the concept of arbitrarily denying access to goods and services to what they perceive as political and ideological reactionaries. That sentiment suddenly shifted once the consequences also applied to them.
Then, it was the ex-president's allies and they established rules about what was and wasn't acceptable in public discourse. What would be truth and fiction. What was conspiracy and truth. What was Covid truth and not (disregarding the often contradicting policies from WHO and CDC)
And everyone on one side f the aisle was like, yeah! Get 'im! Damned liar(s)! It's their platform, they can do what they want. It's not the government so it's not censorship. They only censor bigots.
And how do they treat things in Thailand, Hong Kong or Myanmar, who is the official government and who is the insurrectionist, who is truth and who is usurper?
Well, here we are, very much closer to the plateauing/basining(?) of the slippery slope as we find ourselves at the bottom --with the willful approval of a great proportion of the population because, you know, slippery slopes are fallacies.