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I have a wide view of what 'censorship' is, and I include spam filtering in the definition. For example, a while ago I saw an advert for some kind of erection-c

I have a wide view of what 'censorship' is, and I include spam filtering in the definition. For example, a while ago I saw an advert for some kind of erection-causing pill on a forum discussing C++. If the forum moderators remove such a post, they make the forum more efficient by saving other users (who are looking for C++ content) from themselves having to filter out irrelevant information / a sales pitch. I also see far too many 'work from home' adverts in discussions in the Independent newspaper's comment section (on unrelated articles), and if they took a more censorious approach to such comments then the comment section would improve. To an extent I support censorship, and according to what I believe censorship to be, almost everyone else supports it. If this very comment had been about some unrelated topic, such as giving an opinion about who to blame or not blame for problems in the Middle East, it would be right for the comment to be censored from this discussion, and it would be censorship from a private company, censorship of a political viewpoint no less.

gdulli 7y ago
I agree. If you broaden the term "censorship" so much as to make it equivalent to any entity trying to enforce quality or relevance control standards in its own venue, you make the term useless. While also subverting conversation about actual censorship, cheapening it.
- hnal943 7y ago
  I'm not certain there's a strict line between "actual" censorship and OP's definition. Care to give a definition you think is defensible as "actual" censorship?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - gdulli 7y ago
    Sure, it's hard to draw a strict line that will make everyone happy. I'm not going to try. But that doesn't mean that removing ED pill spam should be conflated with the government banning books under threat of imprisonment. We live in a messy world and have to fall back on using our judgment and common sense, flawed as they are. It's obtuse to pretend that it's confusing why one is acceptable and the other isn't. And it's not helpful to say that the lack of an unambiguous, unanimously accepted definition means that certain clearly reasonable actions can't be taken.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
buboard 7y ago
there is an entire range of censorship, it's not black and white. The question is where to draw the line
- coldtea 7y ago
  Opinions I like = censorship Opinions I don't like = legitimate moderation
- m-p-3 7y ago
  And that line will always move depending on the moderator motives and societal acceptability.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Censorship on spam is probably agreed upon by everyone but spammers. Censorship on the opinions of people is dangerous on the other hand. Like I say on HN many times: today it's the opinions you disagree with that get censored, tomorrow it's your voice.
- root_axis 7y ago
  Do you consider it censorship when comments or articles are flagged on HN?
  - mc32 7y ago
    I would say if the mods do it yes, if it’s the hoi polloi then no.
    - PavlovsCat 7y ago
      > If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -- John Stuart Mill
      - brnt 7y ago
        Point is, Mill lived in an era where dissemination of information was barely at a steam-engine equivalent, whereas now we've got automated opinion-generating rocket systems in orbit ready to barrage millions of info missiles at any online discussion at any point in any language within 300 nanoseconds. New realities need new quotes.
        slavik81 7y ago
        I started reading through On Liberty recently and I was surprised by how topical it was. This discussion doesn't seem to have changed much over the past 150 years. Mill spends a long time addressing arguments for censorship that I still see used today. A lot is lost when a book-length discussion is reduced to a single sentence. In his work, there's a very thorough discussion of why this liberty is essential. I don't like how the grandparent used the quote so flippantly. Without the supporting context, it's a baseless statement that encourages low-quality discussion. One of things Mill did really well is that he thoroughly described his opponents' position before arguing why it was incorrect. You haven't done that, which is why it's unclear what part of his argument is invalidated by improvements in communications.
brlewis 7y ago
The article isn't speaking against censorship in general. It's specifically about companies that are de facto monopolies. And at the very end it mentions big money distorting the marketplace of ideas. I didn't read anything in the article that would oppose censorship by your C++ forum.
mc32 7y ago
Here’s the thing. On dedicated forums we know the protocol. We don’t want spam and we don’t want politics. If it’s a political forum we expect all civil exchanges to be treated equally. So a proponent for Owls and a proponent for sawmills both get their say and one doesn’t get “deranked” or de-monetized because it’s not the popular opinion or the au currant opinion. We don’t expect one political candidate to be artificially ranked and another artificially buried in the results. Now, if I’m on the Hillary blog, yes, of course I expect the org to manage the commentary to fit their narrative. I don’t expect Zuckerberg or Pichai to turn their orgs into the Hillary blog or the Donald blog.
- everdev 7y ago
  > we expect all civil exchanges to be treated equally Define civil :) Take any hot button issue like guns, abortion, etc. where your stance on one side of the issue can be seen as immoral or life threatening to the other side. Take a passionate / borderline tweet from one side and you'll probably get a 50/50 disagreement on wether or not it's "civil". Now what? Block the tweet? Warn the user? How many people need to complain before it's considered a problem? Now go a step further and look at the Westboro Baptist Church. They think that they're doing a public good by shaming those who have died (because they believe God punishes sinners and their families with death). They believe it's a sin not to tell the families that the recently deceased is a sinner. They believe they're communicating God's message. Now you'll probably get 99% agreement that it's uncivil. But now what do you do? Silence an unpopular opinion? The problem is finding out where the line is for defining what's appropriate on a platform and what will be censored. Is it 50% + 1 consensus? 95% consensus? And who gets to decide? The users? The CEO? A board of censors? These are tricky answers and different countries and companies draw the line in different places. But the devil is always in the details. It would be nice if everyone agreed on what's civil and what's not, but unfortunately that's not the case.
  - mc32 7y ago
    So the WBC is an extreme case. Obviously it’s problematic. Their tactics are disgusting, and really it’s counter productive to their cause, though they are more like nasty trolls. But we’re seeing issues where things are not problematic but because people are guilty of thinking “wrong”. If I want to discuss international politics and think we should liberate/invade country X or conversely we should leave country X well alone, I should not get penalized for articulating a point of view. One thing I don’t understand is, if I follow janeblow@ I should not get offended by her tweets. I have the power to unfollow her, I can block her. I don’t see why people’s reaction id to get janeblow@ suspended.
spaginal 7y ago
Censorship that’s dangerous is usually against an unpopular idea or opinion to the group. Usually when censorship is being discussed, the kind of speech or topics it applies to are already allowed in that forum or venue and there is selective filtering of the content going on outside of what the users themselves choose to entertain. For instance, if there were a forum specifically about penis pills, and the discussion centered around penis pills, if the moderators selectively expunged certain pill brand mentions or alternative ideas about penis pills from the forum because they personally preferred a over b, or had a personal or business investment in a over b, that is censorship. If you wanted to discuss canaries or automobiles in this forum, they may tell you to move it back on topic. That isn’t censorship. Similarly, many broad online platforms allow political speech already, it’s just some ideas and people, typically conservative, are being selectively filtered out of the conversation because they don’t want the greater exposure to the alternative but legitimate and contextual ideas or opinions. That is dangerous. If the shoe was on the other foot politically, it wouldn’t diminish the severity it.
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  What alternative but legitimate beliefs are being silenced? I'm not following the issue closely, so I've only heard about people like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos being removed from social networks.
50656E6973 7y ago
>If this very comment had been about some unrelated topic...it would be right for the comment to be censored from this discussion By that same logic, we should censor your comment, because this article is not about filtering bot/adspam from small niche forums; It's about mass censorship and manipulation of organic political opinions on platforms with billions of users.
kube-system 7y ago
Agreed. Censorship is a simple concept - it's any time expression is suppressed. Those who say that _their_ removal of content _isn't_ censorship are simply avoiding negative word associations, or any inherent suggestion that their judgement could be subjective. Even the censorship of off-topic and spam comments is a subject to a high degree variability in judgement and opinion.

gdulli 7y ago

I agree. If you broaden the term "censorship" so much as to make it equivalent to any entity trying to enforce quality or relevance control standards in its own venue, you make the term useless. While also subverting conversation about actual censorship, cheapening it.

hnal943 7y ago
I'm not certain there's a strict line between "actual" censorship and OP's definition. Care to give a definition you think is defensible as "actual" censorship?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gdulli 7y ago
  Sure, it's hard to draw a strict line that will make everyone happy. I'm not going to try. But that doesn't mean that removing ED pill spam should be conflated with the government banning books under threat of imprisonment. We live in a messy world and have to fall back on using our judgment and common sense, flawed as they are. It's obtuse to pretend that it's confusing why one is acceptable and the other isn't. And it's not helpful to say that the lack of an unambiguous, unanimously accepted definition means that certain clearly reasonable actions can't be taken.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

buboard 7y ago

there is an entire range of censorship, it's not black and white. The question is where to draw the line

coldtea 7y ago
Opinions I like = censorship Opinions I don't like = legitimate moderation
m-p-3 7y ago
And that line will always move depending on the moderator motives and societal acceptability.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Censorship on spam is probably agreed upon by everyone but spammers. Censorship on the opinions of people is dangerous on the other hand. Like I say on HN many times: today it's the opinions you disagree with that get censored, tomorrow it's your voice.

root_axis 7y ago
Do you consider it censorship when comments or articles are flagged on HN?
- mc32 7y ago
  I would say if the mods do it yes, if it’s the hoi polloi then no.
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    > If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -- John Stuart Mill
    - brnt 7y ago
      Point is, Mill lived in an era where dissemination of information was barely at a steam-engine equivalent, whereas now we've got automated opinion-generating rocket systems in orbit ready to barrage millions of info missiles at any online discussion at any point in any language within 300 nanoseconds. New realities need new quotes.
      - slavik81 7y ago
        I started reading through On Liberty recently and I was surprised by how topical it was. This discussion doesn't seem to have changed much over the past 150 years. Mill spends a long time addressing arguments for censorship that I still see used today. A lot is lost when a book-length discussion is reduced to a single sentence. In his work, there's a very thorough discussion of why this liberty is essential. I don't like how the grandparent used the quote so flippantly. Without the supporting context, it's a baseless statement that encourages low-quality discussion. One of things Mill did really well is that he thoroughly described his opponents' position before arguing why it was incorrect. You haven't done that, which is why it's unclear what part of his argument is invalidated by improvements in communications.

brlewis 7y ago

The article isn't speaking against censorship in general. It's specifically about companies that are de facto monopolies. And at the very end it mentions big money distorting the marketplace of ideas. I didn't read anything in the article that would oppose censorship by your C++ forum.

mc32 7y ago

Here’s the thing. On dedicated forums we know the protocol. We don’t want spam and we don’t want politics. If it’s a political forum we expect all civil exchanges to be treated equally. So a proponent for Owls and a proponent for sawmills both get their say and one doesn’t get “deranked” or de-monetized because it’s not the popular opinion or the au currant opinion. We don’t expect one political candidate to be artificially ranked and another artificially buried in the results. Now, if I’m on the Hillary blog, yes, of course I expect the org to manage the commentary to fit their narrative. I don’t expect Zuckerberg or Pichai to turn their orgs into the Hillary blog or the Donald blog.

everdev 7y ago
> we expect all civil exchanges to be treated equally Define civil :) Take any hot button issue like guns, abortion, etc. where your stance on one side of the issue can be seen as immoral or life threatening to the other side. Take a passionate / borderline tweet from one side and you'll probably get a 50/50 disagreement on wether or not it's "civil". Now what? Block the tweet? Warn the user? How many people need to complain before it's considered a problem? Now go a step further and look at the Westboro Baptist Church. They think that they're doing a public good by shaming those who have died (because they believe God punishes sinners and their families with death). They believe it's a sin not to tell the families that the recently deceased is a sinner. They believe they're communicating God's message. Now you'll probably get 99% agreement that it's uncivil. But now what do you do? Silence an unpopular opinion? The problem is finding out where the line is for defining what's appropriate on a platform and what will be censored. Is it 50% + 1 consensus? 95% consensus? And who gets to decide? The users? The CEO? A board of censors? These are tricky answers and different countries and companies draw the line in different places. But the devil is always in the details. It would be nice if everyone agreed on what's civil and what's not, but unfortunately that's not the case.
- mc32 7y ago
  So the WBC is an extreme case. Obviously it’s problematic. Their tactics are disgusting, and really it’s counter productive to their cause, though they are more like nasty trolls. But we’re seeing issues where things are not problematic but because people are guilty of thinking “wrong”. If I want to discuss international politics and think we should liberate/invade country X or conversely we should leave country X well alone, I should not get penalized for articulating a point of view. One thing I don’t understand is, if I follow janeblow@ I should not get offended by her tweets. I have the power to unfollow her, I can block her. I don’t see why people’s reaction id to get janeblow@ suspended.

spaginal 7y ago

Censorship that’s dangerous is usually against an unpopular idea or opinion to the group. Usually when censorship is being discussed, the kind of speech or topics it applies to are already allowed in that forum or venue and there is selective filtering of the content going on outside of what the users themselves choose to entertain. For instance, if there were a forum specifically about penis pills, and the discussion centered around penis pills, if the moderators selectively expunged certain pill brand mentions or alternative ideas about penis pills from the forum because they personally preferred a over b, or had a personal or business investment in a over b, that is censorship. If you wanted to discuss canaries or automobiles in this forum, they may tell you to move it back on topic. That isn’t censorship. Similarly, many broad online platforms allow political speech already, it’s just some ideas and people, typically conservative, are being selectively filtered out of the conversation because they don’t want the greater exposure to the alternative but legitimate and contextual ideas or opinions. That is dangerous. If the shoe was on the other foot politically, it wouldn’t diminish the severity it.

daveFNbuck 7y ago
What alternative but legitimate beliefs are being silenced? I'm not following the issue closely, so I've only heard about people like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos being removed from social networks.

50656E6973 7y ago

>If this very comment had been about some unrelated topic...it would be right for the comment to be censored from this discussion By that same logic, we should censor your comment, because this article is not about filtering bot/adspam from small niche forums; It's about mass censorship and manipulation of organic political opinions on platforms with billions of users.

kube-system 7y ago

Agreed. Censorship is a simple concept - it's any time expression is suppressed. Those who say that _their_ removal of content _isn't_ censorship are simply avoiding negative word associations, or any inherent suggestion that their judgement could be subjective. Even the censorship of off-topic and spam comments is a subject to a high degree variability in judgement and opinion.