Have you got a link to examples? I’m wondering if they weren’t also saying that China deliberately leaked the virus.
Saying “it is possible but very unlikely that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab” is talking about the lab-leak theory. Saying “the virus was cooked up and leaked from a Wuhan lab to hurt Trump’s re-election chances” is also talking about the lab-leak theory.
A Infamous case was Twitter baning Zerohedge because of it.
And all that Zerohedge did was point out a lot of public documents, nothing private, and no bioweapon theory. (Twitter claimed Zerohedge had doxxed the scientist, but Zerohedge only had shown the official lab website and documents from it).
> The article, posted under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden" (the fictional character played by Brad Pitt in the movie "Fight Club"), was titled "Is This Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?" It included a photograph of a scientist at Wuhan's Institute of Virology and suggested that anyone curious about the epidemic might want to pay him "a visit."
Thanks for calling that out. This is the only example I've been offered and it's exactly the kind of "talking about the lab-leak theory" that I suspected was less innocent than posed by OP.
That quote of paying “a visit” makes the Zero Hedge article sound more sinister than it actually is. The full sentence from Zero Hedge’s article is: “Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit.”
I don’t see anything wrong with that statement. Peng was the publicly listed face of this research lab at WIV, and his name, photo, and contact info were openly displayed on the website as public facing content.
Zero Hedge was banned because the possibility of a lab leak was politicized by those on the left, including tech companies who operate social media platforms, and they unfairly censored and banned this content because they were biased against Trump/Republicans to a point where legitimate speculation was disallowed.
> A little-noticed study was released in early July 2020 by a group of Chinese researchers in Beijing, including several affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Science. These scientists said they had created a new model for studying SARS-CoV-2 by creating mice with human-like lung characteristics by using the CRISPR gene-editing technology to give the mice lung cells with the human ACE2 receptor — the cell receptor that allowed coronaviruses to so easily infect human lungs.
The fact remains that this type of speculation about bioweapons should never have been banned. Doing so granted the CCP a huge relief from accountability and transparency, one we may never be able to correct for with all the time that has passed.
Zerohedge getting banned from Twitter for publishing an expose of the Wuhan Lab which is pretty close to what is acknowledged as a probable story these days is the most high profile example.
No? Censor sources that have proven time and time again to provide verifiably false information. Zerohedge and Infowars specifically fit into that bucket and it's completely reasonable to shine a light on their lack of trustworthiness.
A lot of folks are saying, "let the people decide what is false!" Well, here's the thing: People are really mind-numbingly stupid. Spend some time using a roundabout in the USA and you'll learn real fast that the average person can't be trusted to be left to their own devices.
To quote Tolstoy: "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Methinks it's all just some form of propaganda, or another, camouflaged as crappy infotainment. So if you are into being brainwashed, you could also don your sunglasses, and have at least some fun, skimming between the lines.
And the amount of evidence in both cases is equal right now - slim and circumstantial. Just because one is political doesn't make it more worthy of censorship if you're removing content based on "misinformation." There's no real evidence underlying either statement.
Saying “it is possible but very unlikely that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab” is talking about the lab-leak theory. Saying “the virus was cooked up and leaked from a Wuhan lab to hurt Trump’s re-election chances” is also talking about the lab-leak theory.