Misinformation

As a young person I was taught that words can hurt people, words like nigger, and that it was improper to use such words. I was never told that using such words was illegal and free speech allows the use of such language. As time past more words were added to the list and it was famously satirized by Geroge Carlin in his seven dirty words comedy skit. Over the past ten or so years this has changed and in today's world a person can lose their job for using the wrong words. This type of thing is so common it has a name called cancel culture. This has escalated from words to phrases and statements which are referred to as misinformation. People are banned from social media sites for such misstatements and they are criticized and ridiculed and publicly shamed. These are all attempts to shut people up and thus attacks on free speech. There are many examples of these actions and one is the case of Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who was blacklisted for questioning how school lockdowns might affect children. He was surprised that Twitter would take on itself the suppression of scientific discussion. This happens on a regular basis when politics gets involved with science and science always loses.