State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'

How commenters interpret the visa policy

• Some read the reported wording (“complicit in censorship of protected expression in the US”) as a narrowly targeted, positive move: a mild diplomatic response to foreign officials or contractors who try to punish Americans for speech made on US soil or pressure US platforms to enforce their own countries’ speech laws globally.
• Others think the NPR framing is misleading and want the full cable text; they suspect the “fact-checkers” angle is partly journalistic spin.

Is this really about “censorship” or moderation?

• Big dispute over definitions:
  • One camp says “censorship” in the constitutional sense is only what governments do; private platforms deciding what to host is property rights and free association.
  • Another uses a broader dictionary sense and says private filtering, especially by platforms larger than many states, is effectively censorship.
• Some warn that the administration already labels private moderation it dislikes (e.g., hate-speech bans, DEI policies) as “censorship”, so the policy could be applied very broadly.

Trust & Safety, CSAM, and harm reduction

• Several point out that “trust and safety” and content moderation teams also fight CSAM, scams, sextortion, and fraud; they find it alarming to cheer visa denials for people doing that work.
• Others counter that such teams or “fact-checkers” often self‑describe in noble terms while engaging in political filtering; they cite COVID and social‑media takedowns as examples where “safety” became viewpoint control.

Fact-checking, bias, and credibility

• Multiple comments argue that fact‑checking is inherently selective and often aligned with funders’ or governments’ agendas; examples are given from Europe (e.g., German “Correctiv”) and Snopes controversies, though specifics are contested or hard to verify.
• Defenders say good fact‑checks clearly show claims, context, evidence, and reasoning, and are indispensable against industrial‑scale disinformation. The answer to selective fact‑checking, they argue, is more and better fact‑checking, not delegitimizing the practice.

Free speech, platforms, and power

• Ongoing tension between:
  • “No speech restrictions, government or private” vs.
  • “Only the state must not censor; platforms must remain free to moderate” vs.
  • “Giant platforms are de facto public utilities and should have special obligations.”
• Debate extends to hate‑speech laws, Nazi symbol bans in Germany, and whether enforcing those abroad should trigger US visa denial.

US authoritarian drift, surveillance, and hypocrisy

• Many view the policy as part of a broader illiberal shift: expanded social‑media vetting for visas, sanctions that digitally isolate foreign judges, aggressive immigration raids, and admiration for strongmen.
• Some say this will further deter tourism and work migration; others respond that US airport/border experiences are already bad and this changes little.
• A minority insists the policy is simply protecting US free‑speech norms from foreign interference; critics call that naïve given the administration’s own attacks on domestic critics.