Late last year, YouTube announced plans to reinstate accounts that had been banned at the behest of the Biden Administration for posting alleged COVID-19 misinformation. The announcement likely came as a relief to groups like the Children's Health Defense Fund, a group associated with Robert Kennedy Jr.; and to Senator Ron Johnson; both of whom were punished by the social media giant for posting videos that ran contrary to the Biden administration's official policy on the COVID-19 vaccine and on COVID-19 treatments.

This is a good move. But we should remember, it wasn't just YouTube that decided to punish speech disapproved by the prior administration. 

A report by the United States House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government contains damning evidence that the Biden Administration leaned on social media companies to censor anti-vaccine content during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report details how Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube all shadowbanned or removed content that was critical of the administration's official stance on the vaccines, the origin of the virus, and more.

The administration's actions were reckless, and endangered more than just our societal freedom of speech.

For one thing, while it might be tempting to think that the Biden Administration only censored crackpots and conspiracy theorists, the truth is far worse. The report details how the Biden administration leaned on Facebook to censor the "lab leak" theory of COVID-19's origins, a theory that's now seen as highly plausible. It similarly asked Facebook to censor "negative information on or opinions about the vaccine," and internal emails from Facebook report that ""The Surgeon General wants us to remove true information about side effects."

Prominent scientists who opposed the administration's position on lockdowns, including Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (current head of the National Institutes of Health) were blacklisted by social media platforms. At the administration's behest, videos featuring Bhattacharya were removed from YouTube.

All of this did immense damage to our truth-seeking apparatus, during a time when finding the truth could not have been more important. When Facebook dragged its feet on censoring certain content, President Biden publicly accused them of "killing people." But the same accusation could be made against the Biden Administration itself: by censoring scientific debate during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, the administration virtually guaranteed that its response would be worse than if prominent critics were allowed to voice their concerns.

Some proponents of censorship argue that the more important an issue is, the more justification there is for censorship. This makes a superficial kind of sense: after all, nobody wants hucksters selling snake oil to take advantage of sick people by claiming that they're curing cancer. But more often, the inverse is true: the higher the stakes of a given issue, the more essential it is that experts on all sides be allowed to voice their concerns freely. By preventing this robust scientific debate, the Biden administration ensured that the policies it implemented (including lockdowns and vaccine mandates) were worse than if prominent critics had been given a seat at the table.