The dangers of censoring anti-vaxxers

Earlier this week, the Labour party wrote to the government urging it to bring forward legislation so that social media companies which fail to ‘stamp out dangerous anti-vaccine content’ can face financial and criminal penalties. ‘The government has a pitiful track record on taking action against online platforms that are facilitating the spread of disinformation,’ said Jo Stevens, Labour’s shadow culture secretary. ‘This is literally a matter of life and death and anyone who is dissuaded from being vaccinated because of this is one person too many.’

My first thought on hearing this was how pitifully out of touch the Labour party is. Does Keir Starmer not realise how zealous social media companies are when it comes to censoring anything that challenges Covid orthodoxy? In the name of protecting the public from ‘disinformation’, YouTube removed a recording of Lionel Shriver reading out one of her anti-lockdown Spectator columns, Twitter blocked an anti-masking tweet from Dr Scott Atlas, a White House Coronavirus Task Force adviser, and Facebook deleted a post by Donald Trump claiming that children were ‘almost immune’ from Covid-19.