| ▲ | kypro 13 hours ago | |
Anti-vax has never really been a thing though. I don't know what the data is these days, but it used to be like 1% of the population who were anti-vax. We have the same thing going on with racism in the West where people are convinced racism is a much bigger problem than it actually is. And whether it's anti-vax or racist beliefs, when you start attacking people for holding these views you always end up inadvertently encouraging people to start asking why that is and they end up down rabbit holes. No one believes peas cause cancer for example, but I guarantee one of best ways to make people start to believing peas cause cancer is for the media to start talking about how some people believe that peas do cause cancer, then for sites like YouTube and Facebook to starting ban people who talk about it. Because if they allow people to talk about UFOs and flat Earth conspiracies why are they banning people for suggesting that peas cause cancer? Is there some kind of conspiracy going on funded by big agriculture? You can see how this type of thinking happens. | ||
| ▲ | dotnet00 13 hours ago | parent [-] | |
Anti-vax was enough of an issue that vaccine mandates were necessary for Covid. It also isn't convincing to be claiming that racism isn't as big in the West given all the discourse around H1Bs, Indians (the Trump base has been pretty open on this one, with comments on JD Vance's wife, the flood of anti-Indian racism on social media, and recently the joy taken in attempting to interfere with Indians forced to fly back to the US in a hurry due to the lack of clarity on the H1B thing), how ICE is identifying illegals, a senator openly questioning the citizenship of a brown mayoral candidate and so on. I agree that denying something is the easiest way to convince people of the opposite, but it's also understandable when social media companies decide to censor advice from well known individuals that people should do potentially harmful things like consume horse dewormer to deal with Covid. Basically, it's complicated, though I would prefer to lean towards not censoring such opinions. | ||