Where do you stand on censorship?


Generally I am a free speech advocate, but I don't believe that you should have immunity for the things you say, if you break laws in your speech you should be accountable for your own words.
It is the Internet that has really stretched both the limits and controls of free speech.

There is a website I use to download Youtube videos.
Not doing anything illegal with them, I have a premium Youtube subscription, they are just videos I need to show customers and I don't want to have to connect to the Internet in the customer's boardroom to show them.
The site I used has been blocked by our government, like all the torrenting sites on the behalf of the large media companies.
I don't like this... It should be illegal for people to pirate content, but that should not give the government avenues to shut down tools and sites that have legitimate other purposes.

Where this is getting really sticky is in a few areas particularly.
The first is child exploitation material, which is heinous and everyone who shares it and enjoys it should be in prison for the rest of their lives.
Governments now are telling big-tech like Meta, Microsoft, Google and Apple that it is their job to ensure the media is not being shared on their devices.
This raises all sorts of questions around ethics, if devices provide end-to-end encryption, how and why do you expect the carriers to be responsible for what passes through the packages.
If you UPS drugs to someone, that is not UPS's responsibility.
There is increasing sophistication in this space where allegedly once an image is designated as child exploitation, that the media companies will be able to detect it via the hash, without decrypting the files.
I just don't know if it is a valid thing to ask tech companies to do.

The other point is around jurisdiction.
We had an issue in Australia where an Islamic man attacked a priest in a church with a knife, he was injured but not killed.
The footage was captured and uploaded to the internet.
We have in Australia a government appointed "e-Safety commissioner" or e-Karen as her opponents have labelled her.
She demanded big tech remove the footage from their servers.... World wide.
How can a nation decide what content the rest of the world sees?
Musk refused and has been bashed through the media... Meta and Google didn't protest, but you can still find the footage on the internet.


Do we like the government controlling what we can and can't see?
I have to say no, even if the cost is high, because democracy and freedom flows from our rights to information. 

I think it’s going to get much worse over time as the world is populated mostly by people that haven’t grown up in countries where freedom of speech is valued.

Censorship in the most obvious way has it's merits. Take age restrictions and classifications - it's the reason why we don't see deliberately vulgar, distressing, sexual or violent content on television at 2 in the afternoon. To some degree, it regulates or ensures common sense as well. In comedy the audience is the genius - we regulate the content. And maybe that's more important than a shadowy figure in the government deciding what is right or wrong. 

Our brilliant Government is potentially backdooring a censorship bill in right now. Their way of tackling domestic violence is not to tackle the plague that is ice/meth, or any of the other existing drug or alcohol issues, mental health or social/cultural issues that exist at the forefront of all domestic and family violence cases - nor has the Labor Government really cared for it's most marginalized people since losing The Voice vote last year - communities over-run with domestic, family and sexual abuse. 

It's tackling and wanting to censor " misogynistic " content online. Boogeyman, Andrew Tate's name has been dropped numerous times. Here's a reality, most people don't know who Andrew Tate is, or any other influencers or any of the other social media talking heads - whether left or right wing, good, bad or otherwise. The problem pre-dates social media, it pre-dates the internet. It pre-dates the western world itself. 

But making it harder for people like Andrew Tate to find an audience is a good thing, I won't argue against that. But who decides what is right and wrong? And how much of it is driven not by a need or want to protect people from provocative content, but instead driven by ideology? 

Does content on social media get wacked with a warning or restriction because it promotes conservative and traditional values as someone in a Left Wing Government feels it is offensive and misogynistic? It's a very quick and easy way to limit the exposure of your opponents, isn't it? 

I think I must be a crazy person, it seems very few people can see what are to me obvious connections.

My entire life I haven't been absolute about free-speech, I always believed that there was a line, now I see that the line is drawn so arbitrarily that it might be better to have no line at all.
Elon Musk has been misrepresented on his reporting on the UK, but the media won't talk about what the courts are doing over there. You will go to jail in the UK for a Facebook or Twitter post:

notthebee.com/article/british-man-gets-3-years-in-prison-for-social-media-post--come-see-the-posts-that-have-now-deprived-him-of-caring-for-his-sick-wife

There is a conspiracy to silence dissent, I don't understand why Muslims claiming that when they have sufficient numbers they will vote for Shariah law is okay, but someone rejecting that isn't...
Why are all our institutions so full of self-hatred they want to destroy everything that we are?

Censorship has always been an issue, to make an obvious statement; however, some specific examples can be illuminating. James Callender was a journalist in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries; when the Alien and Sedition Acts went into effect in 1798, he was prosecuted and sentenced to nine months in jail. The President at the time was John Adams, a Federalist, and Callender became a subject of his wrath when he published the anti-Federalist pamphlet, "The Prospect Before Us", in 1800. Adams, likewise, imprisoned a dozen newspaper editors under the same Act.

This is not totally dissimilar to the predicament faced by, say, Assange, who acted as publisher, not a leaker, but was prosecuted under the Espionage Act ...

We could consider, in another arena, the comedian Lenny Bruce, who was arrested at least eight times for committing "crimes of obscenity" in and around the '60s (which might parallel concerns about 'hate speech' laws today), or how anti-war publications were banned from circulation by the Postmaster General, Albert S. Burleson, during World War I ... There are other instances of censorship in the Post Office, besides, around this time, such as of pro-equality publications in the South.

So, censorship is an intractable issue, even when free speech is enshrined in the law. In some ways, I am not too freaked out by what is happening, because of the fact that it basically has always been happening ...

Everyone is for free speech until it doesn't align with their ideology.

It is always interesting to see how fast people who claim they stand for totally free speech move to wanting to censor all of the internet to protect their kids.

And the thresholds are interesting. Like people should be able to promote drinking diluted bleach to prevent covid but kids should not be exposed to same sex romance or trans people online.

I am pro-censorship these days. I do not give a fuck anymore. I do not want to be exposed to true obscenity or degenerate pornography and I think false information that can harm people deserves to be censored. Like people are free to enjoy shoving jars up their ass, but I do not need to be exposed to that while viewing social media.  Nor should people have the right to harming others while selling livestock medications as cures for illnesses.

Censorship in general is a sticky topic.

We’re about to see a wave of censorship in the U.S. that’s unlike what we’ve seen before. The Project 1776 academic structure is pure propaganda. People didn’t like CRT (it was a cultural boogeyman more than a real issue when taught appropriately), but the pendulum is going to swing wildly the other way to something we haven’t seen since WW2. That worries me.

We live in a culture where the loudest - or angriest - voice becomes the truth. People’s realities are shaped by what aligns with their ideology more than what’s … true.

One of the things I have struggled with from the right is their self-portrayal as free speech absolutists, but their continued balking at the consequences. It’s like the people that “with all due respect” makes it okay to say the most disrespectful thing ever.

Both parties embody cancel culture. Even if government-sponsored censorship is solved, cultural censorship will still dominate America.

This Misinformation Bill in Australia is concerning given the government of the day pushing for it.

While on the surface, it's sold as a genuinely good thing, but the obvious potential is, it can and likely will be used to silence political criticism in this country.

Albo ran half his Referendum campaign on the idea that the No Campaign was spreading misinformation - despite what was coming out of his top campaigners mouths. Dan held a state hostage for 3 years with misinformation while labelling anyone who challenged it as spreading misinformation and lies.

Dig a little deeper, it's also essentially a way to extort and threaten social media platforms out of big amounts of cash for breaches - similar consequences to it's Age Restriction Bill.

This is Australia's new economic plan - extort Musk and Zuck out of billions.

This isn't about silencing some silly people commenting on social media, it's about controlling the narrative.

It continues.

www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/social-media-giants-to-be-slapped-with-new-digital-duty-of-care-provisions/news-story/3d047570f6cbf7d8a2fa16b7add221c4

" While the legislation has yet to be finalised, it could include provisions which will force platforms to identify and circumvent harms related to mental health, young people. problematic internet usage and algorithms. "

Most of what is considered scientific fact today would have once been classed as misinformation at some point... This bothers me a lot.

There's a big difference between things that may be controversial or misunderstood by the general populace or even some experts but are backed up by empirical data versus paranoia and conspiracy theories backed by nothing other than mistrust, stubbornness, and ignorance.

Nov 13, 2024 20:18:38 GMT iNCY said:

Most of what is considered scientific fact today would have once been classed as misinformation at some point... This bothers me a lot.

Most of what is infact scientific fact would be considered by some as harmful to mental health. This new bill can be easily used to silence conversation if it can be deemed " harmful " despite, it being little more than actual reality.

It's the old facts over feelings story. We have a generation living in fantasy land who fall apart at the thought of basic human biology, and as you'd know iNCY, we have a government and academic/arts class casually rewriting and reinventing history in Australia despite scientific evidence to suggest otherwise. Any opposition could easily be dismissed as " harmful " and removed.

Nov 13, 2024 21:18:46 GMT Gyro LC said:

There's a big difference between things that may be controversial or misunderstood by the general populace or even some experts but are backed up by empirical data versus paranoia and conspiracy theories backed by nothing other than mistrust, stubbornness, and ignorance.

Exactly. This is being missed. People are rewriting documented historical events to fit narratives.