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WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations. From Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship), where there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept: > the institution, system, or practice of censoring From Oxford (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship), where again there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept: > The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. We know Amazon is a private corporation. That's irrelevant, as such actions are censorship regardless. So please stop repeating the false claim that this isn't censorship because Amazon can do whatever it wants as a private entity. WHY FREE SPEECH MATTERS Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely valuable to defend, because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability of society. Furthermore, making available ideas that challenge current understanding is necessary if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking society. Free societies are durable over the long term when they protect these rights at all times, for all people, for all ideologies. As a rule of thumb, if the speech in question is not advocating for direct physical violence, it should be permitted. Getting into the business of censoring indirect or non-physical harm (and similarly, judging what is scientific/pseudo-scientific/unscientific) is a huge slippery slope. We could frame virtually any idea as having some downstream negative externality and suggest that it should be disallowed. For example, capitalism, socialism, and communism could all be attacked in this manner. Should books on those topic be dropped? On the topic of health: our current scientific understanding is not bulletproof. It may never fully be. Look at how much our understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet has changed, just over the last 100 years of human existence. During that time, various individuals (e.g. scientists), companies, governments (via agencies like the FDA), and other institutions expressed high-degrees of confidence in beliefs that went on to be disproved over time. It would be a mistake to only allow ideas with broad scientific consensus today. People should be allowed to decide for themselves which institutions and parties and ideas to trust, and to what extent. Large platforms (privately-owned or otherwise) should not get in the way of that access if we want to maintain liquidity of information exchange. WHY PRIVATE PLATFORMS' CENSORSHIP IS CONCERNING Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes. The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.

8note 8y ago
dictionaries are descriptive, not authoritative. whether this counts as censorship or not will always be up to debate. I'd see these as all being applications of speech; amazon is making a statement about these books by putting them in the store front. Folks like Donald Trump or Sean hannity have lots of influence, but we don't prevent them from speaking because of it.
- throwawaysea 8y ago
  > dictionaries are descriptive, not authoritative. whether this counts as censorship or not will always be up to debate. I don't think I agree with this claim about dictionaries being "descriptive". The word 'censorship' exists already, and it has a definition that is unambiguous. The role of these definitions is so that we can all communicate efficiently using a word that is a placeholder for that full definition, knowing that we have common agreement on the definition since we're using the same language. The folks scoping 'censorship' to just governments are redefining the term in a manner that serves their own views, and are eroding a preexisting definition to avoid the connotation it carries. That seems like waging rhetorical warfare in bad faith, rather than holding a meaningful discussion. > amazon is making a statement about these books by putting them in the store front Amazon isn't making a 'statement' by putting books in the storefront. They aren't evaluating each and every product or reading/fact-checking all the content of everything they carry. Amazon is performing very basic market activities, in a stoic and impersonal manner. These activities include things like fulfillment, payment processing, catalogs, recommendations based on customer behavior (e.g. purchases), reviews, etc. These are impersonal and low-level activities, and are by no means "making a statement".
  - Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
    All definitions are ambiguous. It's useless to argue over them. We need to argue about real things in the real world. To do that we need to name them, point them out. It's easy for things like cows or planes; for things like censorship we need to zero in on a minimal model that showcases censorship. For example, if I remove a book from my private library because of its contents, is it censorship? I don't think so. What if this is my library, but opened to a public, even to some small community? In this case I think this is censorship. What if the whole community decided the book should be removed? Again, it's not censorship. What if only the elders of the community came to the decision? It seems more like censorship again. What if we removed the book because it's damaged or, say, radioactive? Not censorship. See, it doesn't matter if I'm a "big player" or something like that, or whether I have rights to do what I do, or what the book contains. All I have to do is to have some people to restrict access to a book or something like that to another group of people because of the contents of the book.

8note 8y ago

dictionaries are descriptive, not authoritative. whether this counts as censorship or not will always be up to debate. I'd see these as all being applications of speech; amazon is making a statement about these books by putting them in the store front. Folks like Donald Trump or Sean hannity have lots of influence, but we don't prevent them from speaking because of it.

throwawaysea 8y ago
> dictionaries are descriptive, not authoritative. whether this counts as censorship or not will always be up to debate. I don't think I agree with this claim about dictionaries being "descriptive". The word 'censorship' exists already, and it has a definition that is unambiguous. The role of these definitions is so that we can all communicate efficiently using a word that is a placeholder for that full definition, knowing that we have common agreement on the definition since we're using the same language. The folks scoping 'censorship' to just governments are redefining the term in a manner that serves their own views, and are eroding a preexisting definition to avoid the connotation it carries. That seems like waging rhetorical warfare in bad faith, rather than holding a meaningful discussion. > amazon is making a statement about these books by putting them in the store front Amazon isn't making a 'statement' by putting books in the storefront. They aren't evaluating each and every product or reading/fact-checking all the content of everything they carry. Amazon is performing very basic market activities, in a stoic and impersonal manner. These activities include things like fulfillment, payment processing, catalogs, recommendations based on customer behavior (e.g. purchases), reviews, etc. These are impersonal and low-level activities, and are by no means "making a statement".
- Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
  All definitions are ambiguous. It's useless to argue over them. We need to argue about real things in the real world. To do that we need to name them, point them out. It's easy for things like cows or planes; for things like censorship we need to zero in on a minimal model that showcases censorship. For example, if I remove a book from my private library because of its contents, is it censorship? I don't think so. What if this is my library, but opened to a public, even to some small community? In this case I think this is censorship. What if the whole community decided the book should be removed? Again, it's not censorship. What if only the elders of the community came to the decision? It seems more like censorship again. What if we removed the book because it's damaged or, say, radioactive? Not censorship. See, it doesn't matter if I'm a "big player" or something like that, or whether I have rights to do what I do, or what the book contains. All I have to do is to have some people to restrict access to a book or something like that to another group of people because of the contents of the book.