Yes, exactly. Making something illegal is serious.
The result of making something like this illegal is:
1. Person is not allowed to talk OR
2. Person is allowed to talk but is now compelled to only espouse a message approved by the government.
Illegal speech in the US is speech which does harm or has a direct incitement to harm such as specifically calling for a violent action, shouting fire in a crowded theater, or lying about someone to harm their reputation and cause financial impact.
To make something like denialism illegal would require you to show that, by allowing someone to say it, they are causing direct and immediate harm. That's not the case here at all. Saying the holocaust didn't happen doesn't cause people to then go commit genocide. At worst it convinces people some horrific event didn't happen, but that horrific event is still horrific conceptually.
Denying vaccines work may convince people not to get them so maybe you'd argue direct harm there? But it's not clear to me how you can measure the harm since it's arguable that said unvaccinated person may get covid and be totally unphased. What about those people that got covid prior to the vaccine? How could you argue direct harm from them when they already have the antibodies sans the vaccine?
There's a problem and solutions with consequences. Every law limits freedom in one way or another. It's a case of how probable and sever is the problem compared to the consequences of the law.
In Germany the problem is Nazis and a choice about how to stop them doing it again. We have seen that such people can convince nearly an entire population (so the problem is likely) and start a world war (so the problem is extreme). Why would anyone debate the need for a law that limits a freedom in a case we consider pretty unworthwhile anyhow (limiting the freedom to deny the holocaust).
As for vaccines it's again a calculation where we know the problem is extreme (huge economic losses and deaths) and the likelihood increases based on how many people don't vaccinate - or whether people in specific jobs don't vaccinate. The calculation shouldn't be that hard.
Pretty sure that 1946 when the country was still full of old Nazi supporters the risk was pretty high. I don't think the risk is that high today, but the laws definitely served a good purpose when they were created.
If those in the positioning of governing achieve a sufficient disdain for the governed, they convince themselves that the populace is too stupid to pursue truth. You may find this a stretch, but it's roughly consistent with calling the voting public "deplorables."
I think it's already been touched on, but the reason Germany made it illegal is to prevent Nazism from happening again. The German government wasn't trying to hide anything. The German government was trying to prevent Nazi's from hiding something.
Don't be naive. It's not the wackos who won't have a platform. It's the people who know vaccines aren't dangerous, but realize they can snag an audience by claiming otherwise, so they prey on those people. These charlatans are the people who won't have a platform and, I say good riddance.
Push notifications are still not a thing on iOS (not for websites/-apps).
You can install a PWA-capable web app. Try twitter.
... you have to dig into the Share menu, then "Add to home screen".
And prepare for weird bugs because PWA mode on iOS is broken in many, many ways. It introduces bugs that aren't there in Safari or Chrome on iOS (which is also Safari, basically).
I'm at a point where I actively try to prevent Safari from installing a home screen shortcut as a PWA. I "upgrade" web apps to PWA on other platforms, but Safari just gets a regular shortcut which opens in a tab. Too much problems...
I don't know about everyone else, but where I live (Florida), the same people who preach that COVID was an intentional, weaponized lab leak also argue that it's a hoax, less dangerous to the common flu.
It is a scam and the same scam happens with sports betting, but it's a bit more nuanced than that.
Trader A buys a 50,000 person email list.
Sends 25,000 an alert that XYZ is going through the roof
Sends 25,000 an alert that XYZ is going through the floor
If XYZ stays flat, he repeats the process a bit later.
Whichever side loses is eliminated.
He repeats the process with 12,500 on each side of the position (more because presumably more people will sign up for his "picks") and you keep going from there.
Perhaps this made sense when you had to physically mail this.
With each round he loses half. Wouldn't it be better to just send all 50,000? Some of the 25,000 who were sent the wrong pick might have misunderstood, did not read it the first time around, would purchase because of brand awareness. With the cost of delivery the same you would be foolish to overlook this.
Usually the scam is just a pure pump & dump with no sophistication: Trader A sends 50,000 an alert that small-cap XYZ is going through the roof, then XYZ really does go through the roof because a large subset of 50,000 people buy it at the same time.
