2 ms·

> 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

> 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.

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.