To attempt to equate that with today "The Experts™" and "Authoritative Sources™" who instead of engaging in robust debate want to engage in robust censorship, these "Experts™" and "Authoritative Sources™" are more akin to Dark Ages Priests wanting to burn the heretic than they are of Enlightenment thinkers and scientists
I agree, people are denying vaccines work, taking fluoride out of tap water, and saying that the earth is flat. It seems like there's something seriously wrong with our media ecosystem when ideas like this are flourishing. I don't know if banning these ideas is good/effective, but we need some way to incentivize the veracity of ideas and not just their "engagement". What that mechanism might be, I don't know.
I think that is a symptom of the problem not the root cause
>>I don't know if banning these ideas is good/effective
its not, never has been, in fact has been shown to make the idea's spread further and become more extreme as people enter into information echo chambers.
>but we need some way to incentivize the veracity of ideas
Why? in reality the root cause is decades and decades of coddling children and the removal of critical thinking education in favor of memorization education.
The root cause is the failure to teach people how to use critical thinking and logic to assess the validity of data and claims made by people.
The reality is that "Trust the Experts™" is an example of this and really does make the problem worse because people are taught to just trust an authority instead of being able to look at a claim or data set and deiced for themselves if that claim should be accepted. The problem become with the "authority" people trust is wrong, either because they are a charlatan, or just ignorant themselves. However because people have been training to alway trust authority they become locked into this unable to think for themselves.
The more we move to a model of messenger over message, credential over data, the worse this problem will become. The additon of punishments for those that dare to resist "authority" is also going to end badly when that authority is wrong. Keep in mind I have countless examples of authority being wrong I can cite, a big on is that for decades and during my childhood the USDA pushed the food pyramid we now know to be wrong. They were the experts and anyone that dared say "hey maybe all these carbs are bad" were shunned... Vegetable oils are a another where the experts it seems may be been very wrong.
The enlightenment in part was the removal of charismatic messengers in favor of data driven objective truth. It did not matter who the person was it matter what they were saying and if they could prove their claim. All individuals were the same. We have lost that in favor of personality, credentials and authority over data, and proof.
Why is the vaccine safe? "Because the CDC and FDA said so"... that is not a valid response to me. Show me the data, show me the studies, show me the proof... that is the valid response.
Here's an 8-hour press release by the FDA [1]. If you want to understand the logic behind the decision-making, it is absolutely available. It's just boring to watch, I suppose.
They are appealing to the authority not the data, and in doing so they are proclaiming these organizations are infallible and beyond question which we know is false.
Having looked at the data I made the choice for myself that the vaccine was safe for me to consume, I did not do this because the CDC said so, or because the FDA did. I did not do this because YT put a banner under a video proclaiming the CDC is an infallible god that can never be questioned
1. Preliminary research showing masks work contrary to the official positions of CDC and WHO
2. People talking about how masks may not be as effective as original research thought, after the CDC said masks where perfect in every-way and infallible god like barriers preventing all covid. Or talking about how masks may work but masking policies down (the AI could not tell the difference was was shutting down anyone that dared question masks or masking policy)
3. Talking about Lab Leak before it was recognized officially as a possibility by WHO and CDC
4. Any talks about treatments that are not the offical vaccines some of which do have studies showing effectiveness, and I am not talking about the "horse paste" though even banning for that is ridiculous people where banned for talking about mAb treatment before it became blessed by the CDC
5. People that were questioning and talking about actual research that was being done on surface spread, showing it was not as prevalent as "Authoritative sources". People where bleaching their groceries when they got home due to the insanity and if you called that out... BANNED you disagreed with the CDC
I have more than that if you would like? I could probally triple my list of examples
Censorship is always bad not matter what people believe the "greater good" is.
Regardless about whether or not the censorship was justified, my point is that there is an avenue for legitimate scientific discussion, via open forums, that the anti-vax community largely doesn’t participate with. That’s in part because it is so technical, and the barrier to entry is so high. Maybe there is a larger discussion to be had about how to keep these kinds of organizations accountable, given that their decisions are so complex.