Banning lies, tolerating poppycock

Are social media giants finally recognizing their moral responsibilities?

Lots of this is tossed around nowadays. How tolerant should we be? (Photo by tubblesnap on Visualhunt.com)

Since my high school class had one of those landmark reunions recently, we’ve been seeing more of each other on social media. It’s not always satisfying. Just the other day, for instance, a classmate reported that on a road trip he and his wife had taken through 13 states, they hadn’t seen any evidence of the Delta variant of Covid-19 — leading him to decide that the hullabaloo about the coronavirus must be a media-induced fraud.

“What we experienced were open buffets like in the pre-Covid days, few if any masks, no one coughing up their lungs, sneezing or collapsing in the hotels or on the sidewalks in the towns or tourist areas we visited,” he wrote. So, he concluded, the current crisis was mostly about “bogus mainstream media reports” that he characterized as “horsepucky and poppycock,” which were intended “to force us to kowtow to whatever new restrictions they deem necessary f…