DEBATENATE

Topics / Free speech

The challenge

“Misinformation should be censored by social media companies”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Nobody in Silicon Valley is qualified to referee the truth, and they've already proved it. In February twenty twenty-one, Facebook put the claim that COVID was man-made on its removal list. By May it quit removing it. Later that year the government's own intelligence report said one agency leaned toward a lab incident. The question is still open, which is exactly the point. You'll say they're private companies. True, and the Supreme Court has recognized their editorial rights. Having the right to do something doesn't make it right, and it gets worse when government officials lean on them. Americans are adults. They can hear an argument and judge it themselves. Let me ask you this: who decides what's false, and who corrects them when they're wrong? Truth doesn't need a bouncer. It needs a microphone.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. The misinformation label has a track record of catching claims that turned into serious open questions.

    Facebook added claims that COVID-19 was man-made to its removal list in February 2021 and stopped removing them in May 2021.

  2. Claims once ruled out of bounds were later taken seriously by the government's own analysts. That's why the debate has to stay open.

    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence's 2021 assessment reported that one intelligence agency assessed with moderate confidence that the first human infection most likely resulted from a laboratory-associated incident, while the question remained unresolved.

  3. When government pressures a private platform, moderation becomes a back door around the First Amendment.

    In Murthy v. Missouri, lower federal courts found federal officials had pressured platforms over COVID-related speech; the Supreme Court reversed in 2024 on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing, without ruling on the merits.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Platforms are private businesses with their own free speech rights, and refusing to amplify dangerous falsehoods is responsible, not censorship.

Nate: They have that legal right, and the Supreme Court said so in Moody versus NetChoice. My point is they shouldn't use it to play truth police, because they've been confidently wrong, and they must never be an arm of government pressure. Label it, answer it, add context. Then let adults hear the argument and decide.

What he grants the other side

Platforms are private companies with a legal right to set their own rules.

The lines

Sources

  1. Meta (Facebook) Newsroom, An Update on Our Work to Keep People Informed and Limit Misinformation About COVID-19 (2020, updated 2021)
  2. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins (2021)
  3. U.S. Supreme Court, Murthy v. Missouri (2024)
  4. U.S. Supreme Court, Moody v. NetChoice, LLC (2024)

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