The Open Web Is Dying
I disagree with both of the conclusion in this article.<p>1. Contact tracing is just a necessary evil, and I for one am fairly happy with the way Big Tech has handled this. Many nations in the EU preferred a centralized approach so they could follow the epidemiological development of covid-19. It was Apple &amp; Google who in the end decided that &quot;nope, not doing that&quot;, thus dictating a more privacy-preserving way of doing this. Likely because it&#x27;s in their interest to have this app&#x2F;data-collection being as privacy-preserving as possible, to avoid the type of FUD that this article is trying to disseminate. If you accept that contact tracing is necessary, then what we are currently seeing is actually the best possible scenario for preserving everyone&#x27;s privacy and the web&#x27;s openness. I&#x27;m all ears for better approaches. What would YOU have the smartphone producer&#x27;s do?<p>2. This brings me to the next point: censorship. It&#x27;s tricky. Not just in this instance, but in general in the current development. Personally, I&#x27;m seeing more and more that an entirely &quot;open web&quot; doesn&#x27;t seem to work out so well due to all the misinformation we&#x27;re disseminating, and something&#x27;s got to give. The example the article is citing is a very good one, I think the conclusion that are drawn in the article are wrong:<p>&gt; They were sharing their observations, and opinions. Right or wrong, is not the point.<p>In my opinion, this is EXACTLY the point! A medical doctor who uses his authority to spread what he thinks is the right message, but goes against what most informed scientists consider correct, is EXACTLY spreading misinformation. The same way we&#x27;re seeing this with anti-vax, homeopathy, chem-trails or whatever other nonsense: Yes, science is a discourse, but the right way of discussing is within the scientific community. So you don&#x27;t call a press conference to spread your observations -- especially if the implications of you being wrong are so dire. You write a paper (NEJM is publishing a lot of discussion-pieces these days, why not send it there, to reach the medical audience?) or maybe as a first step you call your friendly epidemiologists and talk it over with them. Given the circumstances, removing this video was absolutely the right call.<p>With that said, I agree that this is a much, much, much larger problem. Given how important Youtube, Facebook and Twitter are in disseminating information, it is concerning that they can pick what they want to publicize&#x2F;suppress (often w&#x2F;o chance of recourse to the censored). To me, this is one of the biggest issues we have in our current times. I hope we&#x27;ll be able to find good solutions. But given the current situation we&#x27;re in (not just Covid19, also populism and targeted misinformation), censoring might be a necessary first step to fight our way out.