Facebook, Google and Twitter are actively working to ensure that people are not talking about the coronavirus being part of a conspiracy by the United States government.
The coronavirus’s rapid spread worldwide is forcing Big Tech to confront the equally viral proliferation of misinformation — in the form outright falsehoods and half-truths about the outbreak.
Facebook, Google and Twitter have all struggled in different ways to contain medical misinformation, in particular around vaccines, in recent years. The Silicon Valley mainstays face a potentially much bigger challenge as coronavirus spreads across the world, having already infected 2,800 people in China and killed at least 82.
The Washington Post reports that Facebook and its fellow social media companies have been fighting a range of conspiracy theories, including that the U.S. government secretly created or obtained a patent for the illness.
But why spend so much energy on preventing discussion on this topic? If there was nothing to these so-called “conspiracy theories” there would be no need to stop people from talking about them. A free exchange of ideas would in time debunk these “conspiracy theories.”
Apparently these tech companies think it is their duty to tell people what to think and how to think about everything. And it is simply not acceptable in their view to believe that the United States government would do anything bad like create biological weapons that kill lots of people.
Instead, we all have to believe that the coronavirus originated from bat soup because Google, Twitter and Facebook said so and they are apparently the experts on any and all subjects.
