The problem is the theory was just discounted right off the bat without any real reason other than conservatives said it. That is not an intellectually good argument. We should not be banning plausible theories unless we have actual evidence.
Was the theory discounted for no reason? I thought it was discounted because the evidence was weak at the time. Especially in comparison to how vigorously it was being pushed by politicos in power.
For example, if someone killed a bunch of people and the head of the FBI said, "A black guy is doing it!" with no real evidence then I think banning it might be more justified. Now it may turn out that a black guy is the one doing the killing, but that doesn't make the pronouncements of the FBI head justified (although I'm sure the FBI head would feel justified).
Who cares if the evidence is / was weak? They were censored for misinformation not because the evidence is weak. By that logic your post should be censored since your evidence that it was censored for being weak is in fact weak evidence.
We are not talking about the head of the FBI. If the head of the CDC said something like this you may be have a better comparison. Even if the CDC said something like this it wouldn't impact health so it probably shouldn't even count as harmful content.
The burden on proof is on the people doing the censoring. If they wanna censor one theory they need do disprove it or prove another one. And this goes for all subjects, not just 'rona.
That’s a lazy argument from ignorance, and can be dismissed out of hand by Hitchens’s Razor.
(See “philosophical burden of proof”)