Aren’t you excited to be told by Mark Zuckerberg what medical information is and isn’t acceptable for you to hear about?
That’s what happened this week when the techies at Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube decided, almost all at once, to remove a video that showed several doctors lauding hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for patients infected with the coronavirus.
Twitter went so far as to lock up Donald Trump Jr.’s personal account after he shared the video, deleting the tweet and then freezing him from posting any further content for several hours. The video, according to Twitter, violated company policy against “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are privately owned and have the right to censor whomever they want for whatever reason they want, but to claim that they’re doing it under the guise of halting the spread of “misleading and potentially harmful information” is laughable.
Or do any of the content monitors want to produce the medical qualifications that make them authorities on the issue?
It’s true that the opinions offered in the video went against the media-approved consensus of “the experts,” but no one could seriously say it was remotely or even “potentially” harmful.
The doctors in the video — admittedly, I do not know their qualifications, though they have identified publicly as physicians in a range of specialties — say they’ve successfully treated COVID-19 patients using hydroxychloroquine. That’s the same drug that President Trump said he hoped proved effective, to wild anger from the media.
Outside of that video, other doctors have also testified to the drug’s efficacy in limited studies and with anecdotal evidence. Harvey Risch of Yale’s School of Public Health wrote in Newsweek just last week that the drug “has shown to be highly effective.”
Are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube going to take down anyone who shares that testimony even though it comes from a doctor at Yale?
And for the 1,000th time: Hydroxychloroquine is not an over-the-counter medicine. It can only be obtained with a prescription from a doctor. I could write a Facebook note, post a tweet, and record a video lauding the magic that is hydroxychloroquine, and yet no one who saw it could get it without the authorization of an actual doctor. So who are these tech people protecting — and from what? Hearing an alternative view?
It’s not about protection. It’s about limiting the scope of what’s acceptable to say in public.
