The subtle point is that the public forum cannot be owned, and that while the public forum is subject to the law, no one can moderate its content.
What has effectively happened is that the public forum has arisen in the cyberspace. We were not prepared for that since that has never happened.
If the govt hired a contractor to oversee a public good, the contractor could not decide who was allowed in or not, or who was allowed to speak, that wouldn't fly under the law.
Some of the large platforms have (accidentally?) come to own the commons. They cant exercise control just like any other standard property, while the commons are still subject to the law of the land.
Instead of a blanket statement like "my property, my rules" we should be working to define the commons. That is a valid debate. We can debate that definition, which is similar to "what constitutes a monopoly?"
Section 230 was our first attempt and it has served us decently. I think it's time for a tune-up with a fresh perspective now that we have a few decades of experience under our belt.
Edit: But I do recall the COVID origin discussion being quite a censorship trainwreck.
I have seen very few antivax arguments made in the spirit of science. Those that were got repeated lacking the original comment’s nuance.
Keep in mind that the spirit of science was developed with the gates of wealth, literacy and education in mind. Remove those, add in anonymity, or even pseudonymity, and the system veers towards chaos. We are far more open, today, than the Enlightenment-era West was. That requires new tools and guardrails. (What this discussion, broadly, is about.)
I don't know how many people have gotten banned over this (though I'd guess nonzero) but it shows just how easy it is to fall under the new draconian speech policies enacted by the majority of social media.
> The Scottish and UK data (which they'll now stop publishing) show that the effectiveness against hospitalization and death of those with only two shots is now negative.
You don't know how to read statistics.
Meanwhile my post fades into grey soon to be invisible and then the next person like you can claim that they just don't see those science-minded vaccine skepticism comments / posts.
> You've shifted your argument from your doubts have been proven true
No, that's not what I did. I showed that there is actually evidence for each of the points you brought up.
Note also that twitter is quite different from traditional forums in the way it's structured. You follow people, you can block people. The analogy to traditional forums needing moderation isn't really one-to-one.