Twitter recently announced that it will no longer enforce its ban on "COVID-19 misinformation," a fuzzily defined category that ranged from demonstrably false assertions of fact to arguably or verifiably true statements that were deemed "misleading" or contrary to "guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information." The change in policy, which users first noticed about a month after Elon Musk completed his acquisition of the company, is consistent with his avowed commitment to lighter moderation and more free-wheeling debate. But according to The Washington Post, "experts" are warning that "the move could have serious consequences in the midst of a still-deadly pandemic."
That fear has always been the justification for restricting what people can say about COVID-19 on social media, and it is by no means groundless. If false claims deter medically vulnerable people from getting vaccinated or encourage the use of ineffective and potentially dangerous treatments, for example, the consequences could indeed be serious. But policies like the one Musk has ditched present two intersecting problems: Misinformation is an inherently nebulous concept, and private efforts to suppress it on any given platform are strongly influenced by government pressure.
