I hope people will take this reply in good faith, as that’s definitely where I’m coming from, but I think I sort of disagree with this in general.
Censorship means not allowing the speech. Denying someone a platform/quiet space to speak is another kind of speech. You don’t have to put a white supremacist on TV to give their side of things. You have to let them speak but you don’t have to give them a megaphone, and choosing to withhold a megaphone from people with crap ideas isn’t censorship, it’s common sense.
I guess I just want to point out where this kind of thinking seems to lead to in terms of how we treat different kinds of speech.
This is something I’ve thought about a lot, as I’ve reflected on my sometimes hypocritical feelings on the matter from when I’ve been affected by both sides of this issue.
A common example of the 1st amendment is that it allows you to stand out on the street corner at the town square and talk about your beliefs with anyone that will listen. Likewise you could create a newspaper or newsletter and the government wouldn’t be allowed to interfere in your operations or refuse to deliver your mail or something. However, you weren’t protected from people not listening, jeering at you or getting fired from your job because your boss disagreed.
All well and good. But when we look at this in the context of today’s reality I feel like things start to fall apart a bit. Let’s look first at the ‘town square’. For many Americans there really isn’t a town square anymore. Car-centric culture has eliminated publically-owned shared use spaces. There’s regular complaints that modern life doesn’t allow one to simply ‘exist’ anywhere without monetization (and therefore private property and 1st amendment exempt).
Next let’s look at other methods of communication. Yes, mail still exists and is protected (at least with USPS), but zero digital methods of communication are likewise protected. Even if you do go ahead with setting up your own website or mail server, you will be reliant on a private company somewhere. Whether that is the datacenter hosting you, the ISP connecting you or the payment processor you use to keep yourself afloat any or all of those can take issue with your speech and shut you down with zero recourse. You would literally have to build your own bank, ISP, and data center and probably a lot more things in order to practice your ‘right’ of free speech.
So yes, you still have the right to stand on the street corner (and pointlessly yell at the cars driving by at 50 MPH hour) or send out a newspaper if you want. But I think it’s worth asking ourselves if Americans still deserve at least a semblance of what those two examples used to imply. I personally believe that we need more publicly owned digital infrastructure (or at least heavy regulation on internet infrastructure such as payment processors and ISPs/data centers) so that our 1st amendment isn’t eroded into obsolescence.
(And in case it matters, I’ve been both pro-censorship of hate speech and then upset at the non-stop attacks on NSFW content online. I’ve had a hard time working through those two takes on censorship internally)
Depends where one is coming from. When I hear censorship, the first thing that pops to my mind are political prisoners in the USSR (I live in the then-2nd world), where I think this applies. And I think the logic of it still remains, even if mechanics are different.
I hope people will take this reply in good faith, as that’s definitely where I’m coming from, but I think I sort of disagree with this in general.
Censorship means not allowing the speech. Denying someone a platform/quiet space to speak is another kind of speech. You don’t have to put a white supremacist on TV to give their side of things. You have to let them speak but you don’t have to give them a megaphone, and choosing to withhold a megaphone from people with crap ideas isn’t censorship, it’s common sense.
I guess I just want to point out where this kind of thinking seems to lead to in terms of how we treat different kinds of speech.
This is something I’ve thought about a lot, as I’ve reflected on my sometimes hypocritical feelings on the matter from when I’ve been affected by both sides of this issue.
A common example of the 1st amendment is that it allows you to stand out on the street corner at the town square and talk about your beliefs with anyone that will listen. Likewise you could create a newspaper or newsletter and the government wouldn’t be allowed to interfere in your operations or refuse to deliver your mail or something. However, you weren’t protected from people not listening, jeering at you or getting fired from your job because your boss disagreed.
All well and good. But when we look at this in the context of today’s reality I feel like things start to fall apart a bit. Let’s look first at the ‘town square’. For many Americans there really isn’t a town square anymore. Car-centric culture has eliminated publically-owned shared use spaces. There’s regular complaints that modern life doesn’t allow one to simply ‘exist’ anywhere without monetization (and therefore private property and 1st amendment exempt).
Next let’s look at other methods of communication. Yes, mail still exists and is protected (at least with USPS), but zero digital methods of communication are likewise protected. Even if you do go ahead with setting up your own website or mail server, you will be reliant on a private company somewhere. Whether that is the datacenter hosting you, the ISP connecting you or the payment processor you use to keep yourself afloat any or all of those can take issue with your speech and shut you down with zero recourse. You would literally have to build your own bank, ISP, and data center and probably a lot more things in order to practice your ‘right’ of free speech.
So yes, you still have the right to stand on the street corner (and pointlessly yell at the cars driving by at 50 MPH hour) or send out a newspaper if you want. But I think it’s worth asking ourselves if Americans still deserve at least a semblance of what those two examples used to imply. I personally believe that we need more publicly owned digital infrastructure (or at least heavy regulation on internet infrastructure such as payment processors and ISPs/data centers) so that our 1st amendment isn’t eroded into obsolescence.
(And in case it matters, I’ve been both pro-censorship of hate speech and then upset at the non-stop attacks on NSFW content online. I’ve had a hard time working through those two takes on censorship internally)
Depends where one is coming from. When I hear censorship, the first thing that pops to my mind are political prisoners in the USSR (I live in the then-2nd world), where I think this applies. And I think the logic of it still remains, even if mechanics are different.