Coronavirus correctness

Shortly after the realities of the Coronavirus pandemic took hold in the United States, a young Californian technologist named Aaron Ginn wrote a paper arguing that the government’s response to the virus was overblown and costly. He posted the essay to Medium, an online platform specializing in hosting such writings.

Less than a day later, the moderators at Medium removed the Ginn essay. The Ginn essay attracted extensive criticism on Twitter from Carl T. Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington who noted that the paper was getting “too much traction here and even in traditional media.”

After the removal from Medium, the Ginn paper then was uploaded to at least two sites, one of which was Zerohedge, a website that sometimes pushes conspiracy theories. The venue of republication has some effect on readers’ perception of the article, just as the article’s presence on Medium might impact Medium’s reputation. Republication by Zerohedge may be reputationally poisonous, while an archive​.org link, as I have used above, merely indicates that the content in question is no longer available at its original source.

The extent to which the perceived reputational effects of hosting and deplatforming drive the politics of content moderation is underappreciated.

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