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LAST FRIDAY, Facebook removed a Free Speech Union (FSU) post about YouTube’s deletion of a video about vaccine harms. So much for Mark Zuckerberg’s fancy talk about ‘free speech’. The post, which highlighted the stigma and, ironically, censorship faced by those injured by the covid vaccines, was of course entirely lawful. Indeed, it was made by a human rights lawyer who is giving evidence to the covid inquiry. Its removal raises questions about the extent to which the platform’s pivot to a ‘Community Notes’ system (as part of a broader, sector-wide turn towards user-based verification systems) is quite the historic moment for online free speech that some observers claim.
Dr Frederick Attenborough, TCW, 19th January 2025.
