“Masks work? NO” began a Saturday Twitter post by Scott W. Atlas, a top coronavirus advisor for President Donald Trump. In the remainder of the tweet, Atlas proceeded to briefly relate support for this conclusion and for the proposition that masks being promoted as a means to limit the spread of coronavirus infections cause “many harms.”
Because Atlas dared to challenge the “wear your mask” mantra supported by phantom science, Twitter removed Atlas’ tweet.
Jordan Schachtel provides details here.
Twitter and other internet-related companies’ prevention of the dissemination of certain arguments concerning masks should be understood as a heavy-handed effort to prevent public debate of the merits of mask wearing and of government and business mask mandates that require many Americans to cover their faces in order to go about their daily activities. In short, the restraint on speech is a tool for suppressing liberty and informed health decisions by limiting people’s ability to learn about and communicate arguments against mask wearing and mask mandates.
The suppressing of Atlas’ communication at Twitter is an example of how far the “crackdown on communicating ‘alternative’ news and views via the internet” I wrote about in November of 2018 has advanced. Now, internet companies’ gatekeepers have gone so far as restricting communication related to coronavirus by the high-level coronavirus advisor to Trump. Twitter and Facebook have even restricted Trump himself from expressing forbidden ideas challenging coronavirus fearmongering.
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are shutting down speech. In doing so, they stop being debate and discussion platforms and become propaganda platforms.
