Last week, a video titled The Plandemic popped up in a furious, urgent flood of posts in my Facebook feed.

People urged each other to watch the video before censors banned it from YouTube.

Wake up! wrote one friend.

Please watch this before they ban it! pleaded another.

So I watched it.

Although small sections of the film piqued my curiosity, it was simply another run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory -- rich in frightening charges yet poor in verifiable evidence.

And then I waited.

Sure enough, mere hours later, skeptics began posting comments and links to articles challenging the credibility of the videos subject -- Dr. Judy Mikovitz.

But just as sure enough, rather than letting viewers watch the video and debate its merits for themselves, YouTube removed it, stating that it violated the communitys guidelines.

I had to shake my head.

Surely the social media giants know the psychology behind banned material?

Take something away and it doesnt go away. It pops up elsewhere, this time having earned tantalizing new cache.

How many headlines scream: This was banned because they dont want you to know the truth!

Click.

Though now mainly observed on social media, this effect isnt anything new.

When a library in Concord, Mass., banned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its shelves, Mark Twain wrote with delight, They have expelled Huck from their library as trash and suitable only for the slums. That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure.

Whats that line about those who refuse to learn from history?

Facebook, YouTube and the big tech powers-that-be shouldnt censor material that doesnt break the law.

Even when someone thinks its questionable.

Even when someone thinks its dead wrong.

Even, I hate to say, when someone thinks its fake news.

Because the problem here and forever-after will be in determining just who the censor should be.

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? asked the late Christopher Hitchens during a lecture on free speech, Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the job of being the censor?

Is the answer a bunch of software engineers huddled together in a Silicon Valley conference room, or equally as bad, a committee of experts they hire to do the job for them?

They simply dont have to do anything of the sort platform users and social media communities already monitor information themselves in a much more transparent, democratic, free and American exchange of ideas.

This is America. We dont ban speech here. Or at least we shouldnt.

Still, if YouTube and Facebook dont ban controversial posts, will that mean that misleading, incomplete or inaccurate information will sometimes go viral?

Yes. Of course. Thats a problem.

Taking material down wont stop it from spreading and wont stop some people from believing it.

But it will remove our opportunity to openly debunk it.

Leaving it up gives others the opportunity to comment, challenge, educate and even apply peer pressure when appropriate since most of us want to avoid the stigma of sharing bad info. We dont want to be associated with being duped. There is a lot of community pressure to do your research, check your facts and be skeptical.

Censorship is troubling for another reason: It can silence small, minority, dissenting opinions that are true, that do point out corruption, that should be spread because they unearth information wed never know otherwise.

The fantastic Netflix documentary The Pharmacist is a perfect example. No doubt Dan Schneider seemed like a quack conspiracy theorist for calling out Purdue Pharma, OxyContin and corrupt pill-mill doctors in Louisiana.

That is, until millions of ruined lives later it turned out he was right.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Let people speak their minds. Bring ideas into the light where they can be discussed, debated, proved or disproved in the open.

If people are worried that the videos, articles and posts they want to share will be banned, they may be more likely to urgently and quickly fire them off with less pause.

And we really should pause.

Rachel Blackmon Bryars is a Huntsville-based columnist for Al.com, co-host of Belle Curve Podcast and managing partner of Bryars Communications, LLC. Keep up with her work on her Facebook page.

More articles about the pandemic by Rachel Blackmon Bryars:

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Its un-American and ineffective to ban speech - AL.com