6 ms·

Censoring foul language seems almost quaint now. We're busy taking it to the next level.

by tux1968 6y ago

stronglikedan 6y ago
> We're busy taking it to the next level. Thankfully, 'tis but a phase, and we're almost through it.
- praveenperera 6y ago
  I wish I still shared your optimism
- fullshark 6y ago
  What evidence is there that this is a phase? Seems very clear that the majority of people are illiberal, and one subset of the country is salivating over the chance to wield cultural power for a generation at least.
jaspax 6y ago
Censoring foul language is arguably the main thing that we're on about now---with a redefinition of what counts as "foul".
- jariel 6y ago
  They used to censor language and 'ideas'. You could not attack Christianity, or present civil figures (ie the President, the Flag) in a bad light. Hollywood up to 1970's was very much about projecting morality in the classical sense. (Edit: Cohen Brother's 'Hail Caesar' depicts this hilariously with 1950's Hollywood execs in a funny meeting with various Priests and Rabbis trying to get approval for a big '10 Commandments'-like epic. Hilarity ensues as the various sects begin to argue about God ...) 1970 - 2010 it was mostly just language i.e. this or that word. We are now back to censoring 'ideas' but it's the other side of the fence. NYT called for banning 'Paw Patrol' (kids cartoon) for its 'normalisation' of the social roles of police, 'COPS' was dropped because of its ostensible 'glorification of police'. Which I can possibly understand in an intellectual sense, but pragmatically it's completely ridiculous. 30 Rock, one of the smartest and best comedies every madd - and it's not even 10 years old - is already getting episodes banned.
  - cavanasm 6y ago
    Feels like you either missed the point of some of those specific recent examples, or you're oversimplifying them. With the show, Cops (Live PD as well), the overriding concern was that the film crew and the process had turned law enforcement work into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue), and possibly even influenced the officers being filmed to engage in their duties differently than they might have otherwise. Left out, also, is that 30 Rock's "censored" episodes featured blackface, which at this point, the issues with the practice have been covered exhaustively, and large corporations are only now deciding to care as they see public opinion shift, but it wasn't a great idea when they produced those episodes at the time, either.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
      > into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue), The entire news media is like that in a large sense. What purpose does interviewing a family whose home got destroyed in a tornado serve? Of course they feel bad. Of course they will cry. “If it bleeds it leads”. Just like a car accident on the side of the road, people are drawn to watch. The news media profits off of that voyeuristic impulse to watch the misery of others.
      - cavanasm 6y ago
        And that's a fully valid criticism of a certain style of mainstream news that I completely agree with, and that is also being discussed in some circles, and even by some journalists, although it hasn't hit mainstream media level consideration openly. All falls into the massive and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for.
        kbenson 6y ago
        > All falls into the massive and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for. More appropriately I think (at least for TV), it falls into the discussion of how new doesn't see falling revenues. In the past, news was a payment back to the public major networks paid to get access to the spectrum they were using. when it became obvious there was a way to make the news divisions positive in cashflow instead of cash sinks, they were optimized for that. Now, where most news is probably delivered through an entirely different medium, even that minimal connection to the public good incentivized through the spectrum allocation is almost gone. In the distant past, NBC, CBS and ABC would probably have been happy to do away with their news divisions, because it cost them to run them. That they would now fight you tooth and nail to keep them for the opposite reason should put into stark contrast how the incentives have completely changed. Is it possible to completely disentangle money from news? Probably not, and it might not be a good idea. How do you fund investigative journalism if you do? Influence will flow from the money no matter what, but then again maybe that's not any different than it is now. I don't know the solution. I'm also aware I'm glossing over the fact that different parts of the news industry had perverse incentives long before this (newspapers...), and that news probably was never as altruistic as I'm making it out to be, but it does seem like it's gotten worse. I have to imagine if the Founding Fathers had the current status quo in mind when they wrote the constitution and initial amendments, they would have tried to put some restrictions on the ownership of the press to go along with those freedoms.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted_account 6y ago
In the United States, I think we're living in an era of remarkably _little_ censorship; compare Hays Code-era Hollywood to today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code) Tim Wu's "The Master Switch" (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/03073909930 https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...) touches on censorship in the context of information systems. Almost nobody considers how much the "censorship" discussion lags behind what media conglomerates were willing to broadcast to begin with, see Wu's comparisons between media standards in the States vs. the British Broadcasting Company's.
- jraines 6y ago
  Wu also conceptualizes information systems/paradigms as a cycle, in which radio developed a lot like the Internet: 1. wild west days; diversity of both content and quality. 2. Winners emerge by both ruthlessness, inside dealing, AND winning on quality. 3. Their "quality" becomes a standard and a cashcow, and begins to stagnate as the formula is milked. At the same time, they continue to starve and/or absorb competitors, which has two negative effects: first, innovation slows or is actively suppressed. Second, (the key point in this context) as the industry centralizes, the few players (or player) remaining becomes a target for pressure groups. And they are all too willing to comply, because at this point they are either monopolies or near-monopolies and are eager to show the government and public (read: advertisers) that they are "serving the public interest", and shouldn't be regulated, investigated, and broken up. (The Hays Code was adopted "voluntarily" by the studios)

Censoring foul language seems almost quaint now. We're busy taking it to the next level.

stronglikedan 6y ago

> We're busy taking it to the next level. Thankfully, 'tis but a phase, and we're almost through it.

praveenperera 6y ago
I wish I still shared your optimism
fullshark 6y ago
What evidence is there that this is a phase? Seems very clear that the majority of people are illiberal, and one subset of the country is salivating over the chance to wield cultural power for a generation at least.

jaspax 6y ago

Censoring foul language is arguably the main thing that we're on about now---with a redefinition of what counts as "foul".

jariel 6y ago
They used to censor language and 'ideas'. You could not attack Christianity, or present civil figures (ie the President, the Flag) in a bad light. Hollywood up to 1970's was very much about projecting morality in the classical sense. (Edit: Cohen Brother's 'Hail Caesar' depicts this hilariously with 1950's Hollywood execs in a funny meeting with various Priests and Rabbis trying to get approval for a big '10 Commandments'-like epic. Hilarity ensues as the various sects begin to argue about God ...) 1970 - 2010 it was mostly just language i.e. this or that word. We are now back to censoring 'ideas' but it's the other side of the fence. NYT called for banning 'Paw Patrol' (kids cartoon) for its 'normalisation' of the social roles of police, 'COPS' was dropped because of its ostensible 'glorification of police'. Which I can possibly understand in an intellectual sense, but pragmatically it's completely ridiculous. 30 Rock, one of the smartest and best comedies every madd - and it's not even 10 years old - is already getting episodes banned.
- cavanasm 6y ago
  Feels like you either missed the point of some of those specific recent examples, or you're oversimplifying them. With the show, Cops (Live PD as well), the overriding concern was that the film crew and the process had turned law enforcement work into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue), and possibly even influenced the officers being filmed to engage in their duties differently than they might have otherwise. Left out, also, is that 30 Rock's "censored" episodes featured blackface, which at this point, the issues with the practice have been covered exhaustively, and large corporations are only now deciding to care as they see public opinion shift, but it wasn't a great idea when they produced those episodes at the time, either.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > into voyeuristic spectacle, literally profiting off the pain of others (some may believe those people deserve that pain, but that's a separate issue), The entire news media is like that in a large sense. What purpose does interviewing a family whose home got destroyed in a tornado serve? Of course they feel bad. Of course they will cry. “If it bleeds it leads”. Just like a car accident on the side of the road, people are drawn to watch. The news media profits off of that voyeuristic impulse to watch the misery of others.
    - cavanasm 6y ago
      And that's a fully valid criticism of a certain style of mainstream news that I completely agree with, and that is also being discussed in some circles, and even by some journalists, although it hasn't hit mainstream media level consideration openly. All falls into the massive and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for.
      - kbenson 6y ago
        > All falls into the massive and fraught discussion around how news gets paid for. More appropriately I think (at least for TV), it falls into the discussion of how new doesn't see falling revenues. In the past, news was a payment back to the public major networks paid to get access to the spectrum they were using. when it became obvious there was a way to make the news divisions positive in cashflow instead of cash sinks, they were optimized for that. Now, where most news is probably delivered through an entirely different medium, even that minimal connection to the public good incentivized through the spectrum allocation is almost gone. In the distant past, NBC, CBS and ABC would probably have been happy to do away with their news divisions, because it cost them to run them. That they would now fight you tooth and nail to keep them for the opposite reason should put into stark contrast how the incentives have completely changed. Is it possible to completely disentangle money from news? Probably not, and it might not be a good idea. How do you fund investigative journalism if you do? Influence will flow from the money no matter what, but then again maybe that's not any different than it is now. I don't know the solution. I'm also aware I'm glossing over the fact that different parts of the news industry had perverse incentives long before this (newspapers...), and that news probably was never as altruistic as I'm making it out to be, but it does seem like it's gotten worse. I have to imagine if the Founding Fathers had the current status quo in mind when they wrote the constitution and initial amendments, they would have tried to put some restrictions on the ownership of the press to go along with those freedoms.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

deleted_account 6y ago

In the United States, I think we're living in an era of remarkably _little_ censorship; compare Hays Code-era Hollywood to today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code) Tim Wu's "The Master Switch" (https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/03073909930 https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...) touches on censorship in the context of information systems. Almost nobody considers how much the "censorship" discussion lags behind what media conglomerates were willing to broadcast to begin with, see Wu's comparisons between media standards in the States vs. the British Broadcasting Company's.

jraines 6y ago
Wu also conceptualizes information systems/paradigms as a cycle, in which radio developed a lot like the Internet: 1. wild west days; diversity of both content and quality. 2. Winners emerge by both ruthlessness, inside dealing, AND winning on quality. 3. Their "quality" becomes a standard and a cashcow, and begins to stagnate as the formula is milked. At the same time, they continue to starve and/or absorb competitors, which has two negative effects: first, innovation slows or is actively suppressed. Second, (the key point in this context) as the industry centralizes, the few players (or player) remaining becomes a target for pressure groups. And they are all too willing to comply, because at this point they are either monopolies or near-monopolies and are eager to show the government and public (read: advertisers) that they are "serving the public interest", and shouldn't be regulated, investigated, and broken up. (The Hays Code was adopted "voluntarily" by the studios)