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And which country would that be? Even if the US, peer pressure is often enough to get political dissenters banned from their social media accounts, jobs, etc.
by pnako 6y ago
And which country would that be?
Even if the US, peer pressure is often enough to get political dissenters banned from their social media accounts, jobs, etc.
Many people use the cope out that it's different when it's done by the government or by a private company, but I don't see it as being that different.
- komali2 6y agoIt's no cop out - businesses don't hold a monopoly on violence. They can't summarily remove the right of travel and speech (by jailing someone). A Nazi getting banned from Facebook isnt comparable to a human rights lawyer being stuck under house arrest for years.
- unishark 6y ago> And which country would that be? With your apparent standard for freedom of speech, isn't pretty much every country excluded? So now everyone is the same as an authoritarian one-party state that outlaws opposition parties and actively censors all internet websites.
- pnako 6y agoI didn't say it was exactly the same, but it's not terribly different either. Many conservatives or "alt right" types get censored in the west, and some of them have to find hosting in Russia (or on Russian social networks like VK), a country we condemn for censorship. I'm not under the delusion that Russia hosts those people out of respect for freedom of speech, of course, but I find it an interesting observation. It's hard to blame China for censoring people it deems terrorists, separatists, enemies of the state or whatever, when in the west we're so quick to do it with the enemy-du-jour, sticking a label like 'Nazi' to demonize them (currently, it's the far right/alt right, previously it was communists, who knows which group it will be in ten years).
- alisonatwork 6y agoSaying "many" conservatives get censored in the west is inaccurate, considering the most popular cable news channel in America is proudly conservative, as are many local news outlets and some of the top national newspapers. In addition, the few people and organizations that have been deplatformed from social media and other hosting solutions in the west have had that fate befall them due to companies making a decision that it is not in their financial interest to allow that type of content on their platforms, given its unpopularity among other customers. This is a completely different situation to China, where companies are directed by the government to explicitly censor certain types of content, and individuals are routinely arrested and imprisoned for creating or sharing content that the government does not agree with.
- pnako 6y agoIn China, political dissenters are "de-platformed" (what a nice weasel word for "censored") by companies as instructed by the government; in America, they are censored by companies as instructed by angry mobs. It doesn't make as much a difference as you think.
- alisonatwork 6y agoI live in China. It makes a very big difference. "Angry mobs", as you put it, are just ordinary people freely expressing their opinions to companies that they choose to do business with. No company is forced to comply with the requests of an "angry mob". No government agency is going to punish a company that doesn't comply. Nobody is getting thrown in prison for something they said online. Please, it does a disservice to those who are actually experiencing real oppression at the hands of an authoritarian government to make this comparison. Here is just one list of people who have been imprisoned in China largely for expressing themselves online: https://www.chinesepen.org/english/category/writers-in-prison https://www.chinesepen.org/english/category/writers-in-priso... Meanwhile, the "many conservatives" who you suggest have been censored in the west are still free to broadcast their content to anyone who wants to listen.
- fit2rule 6y agoahem Julian Assange cough America is no better than China when it comes to repressing dissent. American military industrial pharmaceutical organisations are better at usurping insurrection and revolutionary movements, however.
- deathgrips 6y agoJulian Assange knew what he was getting in to when he voluntarily got a security clearance, accessed information he wasn't authorized to access, and then leaked that information to the entire planet in violation of his security clearance. The leaks accomplished nothing of concrete positive value. He was perfectly free to leave government work and become a political activist without leaking classified information.
- monocasa 6y agoWhat? Julien Assange never received a clearance, he was simply the publisher.
- deathgrips 6y agoOh my bad, I mistook that for Edward Snowden.