On Wednesday, Elon Musk made a huge decision in support of free speech for Twitter users. In a tweet, Musk declared that users will be able to question “the science” once again.
“New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk tweeted.
Like most of Musk’s actions involving Twitter, this policy announcement was controversial.
As someone who has been suspended from Twitter, and later permanently banned from Twitter for questioning “the science,” I am all for this new policy, and I hope that my Twitter account will be restored soon.
However, some think that the policy will empower conspiracy theorists. Others spoke in support of the policy, arguing that it encouraged honest inquiry into scientific questions.
“Bad news for transgender extremism, covid totalitarians, and climate alarmists,” tweeted Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.
“Isn’t it remarkable that this is a departure from what we’ve seen for many years?” journalist David Martosko asked. “I hope it also means it will be acceptable to examine who’s funding science and what kind of restrictions that places is [sic] on scientists.”
“This. Changes. Everything. If true,” tweeted Eric Weinstein, a mathematical physicist, economist, and the managing director of Thiel Capital. “Is that a 1000% commitment to biologists that they can stop *lying* about biological sex, healthy reproductive development, ‘herd immunity’, genetic differences between geographically separated populations, horse paste, Wuhan Inst. GoF, etc.?”
Wajahat Ali, a New York Times contributor, was unhappy about the new policy and poetically declared Musk’s post to be “Something a really dumb person would tweet.”
How articulate.
We all know that Twitter and Facebook have used “the science” as a pretext for censoring speech on their platforms. Many things dubbed “misinformation” would later be acknowledged not to be so. In 2020, if you suggested that COVID was manmade and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, you’d get censored. Since then, we’ve learned there is ample evidence that this may actually be the case. You also couldn’t talk about hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin as possible treatments for COVID… both of which now have many studies proving their efficacy.
Questioning “the science” is incredibly important to keeping “the science” honest. After two years of debate being silenced, this is welcome news.
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