> The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with trust and attention, not muzzling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the

> The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with trust and attention, not muzzling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of censorship at all. They look like viral or coordinated harassment campaigns, which harness the dynamics of viral outrage to impose an unbearable and disproportionate cost on the act of speaking out. They look like epidemics of disinformation, meant to undercut the credibility of valid information sources. They look like bot-fueled campaigns of trolling and distraction, or piecemeal leaks of hacked materials, meant to swamp the attention of traditional media. This is orwellian. I can already tell it's going to set up the argument that actual censorship is necessary to counter the "censorship" of harrassment, disinformation, trolling, distraction and piecemeal leaks of hacked materials, such as Trumps tax returns, the Panama papers, the Snowden files ... It reminds me of the idea that "words or violence" or even that "silence is violence", justifying actual violence - in this case actual censorship - as a defensive measure. Censorship is a very clear word. If someone wants to say something, and someone else wants to listen to him, and you interfere, that's censorship. If someone wants to say something, and someone else says something else that distracts from what the first guy says that's not censorship. A common line to justify deplatforming is that you have no right to an audience, but it really is appropriate here: The mainstream media has no right to an audience. If people prefer to listen to Alex Jones, then maybe the mainstream media should ask themselves how they managed to fuck up peoples trust in them, rather then whining about the censorship of Alex Jones distracting from them.