[fullmetal]

Given that I have seen a whole rainbow of opinions and "facts" published (sometimes too hastily) about all manner of Covid-19 topics, I'd say the press is pretty free to do whatever the heck it wants, including publishing typos and poor grammar...

Here's where things break down: you can effectively implement de facto censorship by gaming search algorithms to overwhelm news readers with a barrage of seemingly different articles promoting opinion X over all other opinions or articles.  As it turns out, in today's internet news economy, you can publish whatever you want, but what others read is filtered by "popularity" and "engagement" to monetize ads.

Check out this Twitter account that lists the ten top-performing link posts by US Facebook pages in the past 24 hrs: https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

I have no qualms about our freedom of press.  In fact, elements of the "press" have been known to promote falsehoods and dangerous opinions without consequence, so maybe we're too free?  (Dangerous opinion, I know.)  It's what's in between the press and our eyeballs that might be the problem, if we allow something to get in between the press and our eyeballs.

[fullmetal]

Given that I have seen a whole rainbow of opinions and "facts" published (sometimes too hastily) about all manner of Covid-19 topics, I'd say the press is pretty free to do whatever the heck it wants, including publishing typos and poor grammar...

Here's where things break down: you can effectively implement de facto censorship by gaming search algorithms to overwhelm news readers with a barrage of seemingly different articles promoting opinion X over all other opinions or articles.  As it turns out, in today's internet news economy, you can publish whatever you want, but what others read is filtered by "popularity" and "engagement" to monetize ads.

Check out this Twitter account that lists the ten top-performing link posts by US Facebook pages in the past 24 hrs: https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

I have no qualms about our freedom of press.  In fact, elements of the "press" have been known to promote falsehoods and dangerous opinions without consequence, so maybe we're too free?  (Dangerous opinion, I know.)  It's what's in between the press and our eyeballs that might be the problem, if we allow something to get in between the press and our eyeballs.