The Crime of Curiosity
The potential costs of systemically removing correct but controversial/fringe content are extremely detrimental to scientific progress in general. Sure, we remove thousands of obviously false and likely harmful posts, and there are cases to be made for why that may be good, but sometimes hidden within those thousands of posts was something that may have had a tremendously positive effect, but yet could not be separated from the noise.<p>"The Crime of Curiosity" is a great way to put it, because we're already banned from questioning a lot of areas of science on most major tech platforms. This system seems to be helpful in some areas until it makes some mistakes, in which case the effects are catastrophic.<p>Remember that within the first year of covid, "masks work" was considered misinformation along with "a vaccine is likely to happen within a year or two", along with "this may be related to a lab leak", along with... Reality is always changing and uncertain and our policies should reflect that we do not have it all figured out, nor will we (collectively) ever. (Edit: as one commenter expressed skepticism of the mask claim, read over a link like <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/fe2oqg/aita_for_sending_my_son_to_school_with_medical/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/fe2oqg/aita_...</a> about how normal people felt about masks in the first few months of covid. It's pretty shocking and I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality just re-reading it and the top responses).<p>Now that our infrastructure is being expanded and built out with censoring of 'incorrect' information as a top priority, I fear for how bad the mistakes we make in the future may be.