> Literally the BMJ itself had articles removed from Facebook!

These people got their stuff published in the British Medical Journal, so nobody in the scientific community had the slightest problem seeing it.

Facebook posted a fact check where the story was shared pointing out some problems with it. They didn’t “censor” anything. It was frankly entirely reasonable and the BMJ should have done better in the first place. Facebook did “combat bad speech with more speech”, the thing you’re supposed to do, and the cranks absolutely lost their minds.

In any case, the danger is over now and we can rest easy knowing that Facebook won’t lift a finger to prevent millions from being misled about vaccines causing autism. They’ll sell ads alongside the posts! phew

...let's get our facts straight here. I hope we can agree on this nutshell:

* During phase III of the Pfizer trial, there was an unblinding event which was not initially disclosed. At first, it appeared that it might only have been a few dozen participants, but later disclosures showed that it was more serious.

* The BMJ learned of this - again, only knowing about a few dozen patients - from the regional director of the contractor carrying out one of the arms of the trial, who was fired the same day she reported the unblinding to the FDA (as required by law). This disclosure included photographs of documents, in the study area, with unblinding information on them.

* The BMJ published what was, in retrospect, an extremely cautious report, even though by that time it was becoming clear that the problem went even beyond mass unblinding and into falsified data, so much so that the contractor's quality control check team were overwhelmed trying to catch up in the days between Jackson's termination and the publication of the report.

* In response, Facebook added an inane "fact check", calling the BMJ a "news blog", and which got several of the above facts wrong. In fact, the "fact check" didn't actually make any coherent assertions about the actual content of the article at all. It seemed its primary function was to add an insinuation of doubt, via scary red boxes, about the BMJ report, without any critique of the substance or merits.

* Three days later, Facebook went further - preventing the story from being shared at all, and adding warnings to users commenting on the article (in places where it had already been shared) that they risked having their accounts degraded or terminated for spreading misinformation.

* All the while, board members of Pfizer (one of who was a former FDA commissioner) were permitted to deny these assertions and smear the whistleblowers (in what, in retrospect, turns out to have been actual misinformation) with no "fact checks" or prohibitions on sharing.

* Months later, Facebook acknowledged that they took these actions at the urging of the White House.

...I don't think it's the least bit far-fetched to call this "censorship".