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Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

353 points by steelstraw 5y ago

josephcsible 5y ago
One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.
- tandymodel100 5y ago
- api 5y ago
  Outside extreme examples like child porn or speech that is copyright violation I am not aware of many cases of actual prohibited speech in the US. Schools however are a grey area because attendance is mandatory and the state sets the curriculum.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    It’s not a gray area at all. Public schools are a public service paid for by tax dollars. The government excluding certain things from the curriculum doesn’t implicate freedom of speech any more than it excluding certain bus routes implicates freedom of movement.
    - beebmam 5y ago
      Forced curriculum on students, at all, is no different than re-education camps; state sponsored indoctrination that both political parties (currently) support. All education should be consensual
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        You're essentially saying school vouchers, and then the government doesn't choose the curriculum at private schools. In a public school there isn't anyone else there to choose the curriculum. Everyone there is a government employee.
        beebmam 5y ago
        No, I'm arguing that forced schooling in general is an unethical act, on par with communist indoctrination, and there should be no government run schools at all
- Sebb767 5y ago
  He actually handles that distinction early in the article as a quote: > [...] he noted that there exists not just a right to speak but a right to hear. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” But this is of course a gray area. You don't have to listen to anything anyone has to say, but it's also possible to sideline something enough that it is effectively censored without being outright forbidden.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    I don't see how that quote addresses it. Wouldn't the relevant right be a "right not to hear", which he doesn't mention? > You don't have to listen to anything anyone has to say If you're a student, and it's in the state mandated curriculum, then you do. > it's also possible to sideline something enough that it is effectively censored without being outright forbidden. I 100% agree with this.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      > I don't see how that quote addresses it. Wouldn't the relevant right be a "right not to hear", which he doesn't mention? You're right, I misread your comment. He really does not differenciate this clearly, despite having examples for both cases.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    That’s completely inapposite to the point being made above. Choosing a curriculum is about curation—it has nothing at all to do with free speech, neither in the legal sense, nor in the broader “free speech values” sense.
- klyrs 5y ago
  > Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school.” Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Isn't this still the same distinction? That's still just saying that nobody can force students to learn about critical race theory, not that they can't go read about it on their own if they want.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      No, it says that critical race theory cannot be offered. That's specific and distinct from required.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        Ah, I see: that affects whether it's allowed to be taught in an elective class or not. Yes, to fully oppose censorship, we should allow critical race theory to be taught in optional elective social studies classes. But then we should also allow optional elective science classes to teach that evolution is wrong, because to do otherwise would be censoring the young-Earth creationists.
        klyrs 5y ago
        If you can find a way to teach that without violating the Establishment Clause, sure. The only way forward I can see here would look like a comparative history of religions course, which would teach various creation stories from a neutral viewpoint. And that doesn't seem to be what those campaigning for anti-evolution education have been looking for. Curious if you've got any fresh ideas, though.
        5y ago
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  You are correct. Not sure why you're getting down voted. Just because Pinocchio isn't in the curriculum doesn't mean it's banned. You can still get it in the school library. Not in curriculum != Banned
  - tandymodel100 5y ago
- imgabe 5y ago
  I don’t remember the case, but I read somewhere that the Supreme Court drew a distinction between deciding not to add something vs taking away what was already there in regards to school libraries. Assuming this is referring to Maus, it wasn’t a part of the curriculum, it was just a book that was available in the library. The school board removed it from the library, clearly in an effort to limit access to it.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I'm not in favor of book banning, but that book shouldn't be allowed in a library.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      Why not? I’ve heard of it but never read it. I just know it’s widely acclaimed and about the Holocaust.
    - sixstringtheory 5y ago
      I’ve never seen/read it, curious to know why you think it shouldn’t be allowed in libraries.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      P.S. That was sarcasm.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dgellow 5y ago
      I get the irony but in the current context that doesn’t really read as a joke.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    > Assuming this is referring to Maus, it wasn’t a part of the curriculum. It was.[1] [1] https://www.wate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/01/Called_Meeting_Minutes_1-10-22.pdf https://www.wate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/01/Cal...
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Also, when it comes to publication, plenty of stuff used to be essentially banned by 'platforms', it just wasn't obvious because "user-generated content" was barely a thing (letters to the editor) in comparison to people posting on Facebook and Youtube and Twitter and Tiktok. Random people being able to post content for thousands or even millions to immediately see, with no explicit gatekeepers prior to submission; this is largely a recent thing. And it makes sense that of course everywhere has rules, bare minimum basically nobody likes people spamming stuff, for example, even in cases where it's legal. If you create a message board about model trains and some rando starts constantly spamming ads for their series of NFT's, I guess banning them is technically 'censorship', but you could also call it 'the bare basics of maintaining a functional community'. I think that for platforms like Twitter and Facebook, perhaps it may make more sense to end up a situation more like newspapers, where you have more reputable papers like the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ that have stricter rules, and then you also have the National Enquirer or other random outlets that have little to no standards. If Twitter and Facebook want to have somewhat tighter rules where they censor people, that's fine, the people being censored should then just have options of other platforms with different or fewer rules. Just seems like the problem to me is that people expect these mega platforms to be all things to all people, when that's probably not realistic.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam. Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis. Free speech protects good faith debates.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      > Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis. It's not a strawman, as many people assert that platforms should just let anything not-illegal stay up. You may not believe this, but there are others who I've seen assert it. > Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam. It's not the same, but the issue is that once you're past the border of "we'll only ban illegal stuff", you're now in the realm of much more subjective decisionmaking. In practice, many forms of speech could be classified as both political, and harassment/bullying/other bad stuff, which is what usually happens with Facebook. In their case, they don't want to get into the political sphere, but they do want to bad blatant misinformation, and in practice that does overlap with politics.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  I think we really need to have a “who controls the curriculum” conversation. When I was a teacher, we could chose from whatever the books the school had a ton of lying around. Not a good way to make a selection. At the same time, people are freaking out when parents want a say I what books their children are evaluated on. If it was up to me, we’d focus on the classics: Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, etc.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Important to not accidentally let any 20th century books into the curriculum, let alone any 21st century ones?
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      Sorry, I meant to include Gilgamesh ;)
- coffeeblack 5y ago
  And then there is the new “cancel culture” that does not target the speech itself, but the reputation of the author. By using horrific accusations and smears, the author’s reputation is destroyed, so that people don’t want to hear the speech anymore, based on the lies they heard about the author.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- GolfPopper 5y ago
  Another confusing facet of the debate is a significant number of participants who equate not being given an audience or a trivially-used press (in the form of a popular website) with being censored.
JohnTHaller 5y ago
"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- refurb 5y ago
  I come to HN for a diversity of opinion. I'm more interested in the ideas than the ideology of the authors. Good ideas can come from anywhere.
  - thereare5lights 5y ago
    There is no diversity of opinion here though. Liberal leaning articles get flagged and removed all the time. When if/when they're unflagged by mods, they remain buried.
  - version_five 5y ago
    Yeah, there is a flag button for inappropriate content. Outside of that, provenance should be irrelevant. But it's often leveled as an ad-hominem style attack when people don't actually have something to contribute
  - asveikau 5y ago
    I feel like the recent thread on Joe Rogan was a bit less "diversity of opinion" and more "a large crowd expressing fringe narratives". While most people in other places were talking about Joe Rogan's support for ivermectin, telling people to avoid vaccines, or platforming the guy who calls pandemic response "mass psychosis", over here, the story was that Spotify was censoring him, and what an outrage that is.
tomlockwood 5y ago
I think this article misses one big point which is how we - the people on this website - have actively constructed a world where advertisers can shift spend really quickly. Brand safety is a big reason for censorship - the idea of keeping ads for a company away from content that people might not like. YouTube demonetizes loads and loads of controversial topics across the political spectrum - and that's a Feature for advertisers. This milquetoast move to the middle of the road is just those advertising platforms we all built, working as intended. ed: And Another Thing, that time when YouTube was free and people were free to post what they wanted? Yeah that was when the company was running out of runway and relying on VC-type money. The VCs didn't give a toss about brand safety.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  That’s not censorship, it’s editorial oversight.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Editors censor things!
    - gpm 5y ago
      No, editors choose not to have the organization they work for say things, censoring things is stopping other people and organizations from saying things, not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things. This is just a bit strange on the internet, because so much of what we see is one organization exactly repeating what someone else said on their request, so it's the organization saying it, but it feels like maybe it isn't.
      - tomlockwood 5y ago
        > not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things. I think nations are organizations. That term is, very vague.
- kevin_nisbet 5y ago
wayoutthere 5y ago
I believe in freedom of speech. What I do not believe in is freedom of mass speech. Your responsibility to the truth should increase in line with your reach. Have 1000 followers in twitter and want to talk about starting the next holocaust? Great, say whatever. A million followers? Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.
- jrpt 5y ago
  Who defines what the truth is? The mainstream? That didn't work out too well for Galileo.
- EricE 5y ago
  >"I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone." At least in the US you can't enforce it - and yes, any lunatic can grab a megaphone if they want. The best way to handle problematic speech is more speech, NOT less. Trying to pretend lunatics don't exist is irrational and often a pretext to just block people that others disagree with. Screw that. Safest place for lunatics is out in the open, not driven underground.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Well the way things are headed, we’ll be fighting it out in the open IRL soon.
    - EricE 5y ago
      Good. Too many have let things like blatant censorship go on for too long. It's time for more people to be uncomfortable, if for just a little. We are drowning in a morass of complacency :p
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >Well the way things are headed, we’ll be fighting it out in the open IRL soon. If so, I think it will be along the lines of two people get into a fight. After about 5 seconds, they are exhausted and realize that getting into a fight was a really bad idea. They will soon stop and hopefully grab a beer together afterwords, perhaps to argue politics some more.
EricE 5y ago
Pretty sad when it's clear that Douglass would be cancelled in todays culture :p
- poink 5y ago
  That's not at all clear.
Nursie 5y ago
The rants about "cancel culture" from the US right are hilarious, given their long history of boycotts of brands they dislike and escalating hate and fear for everything up to actual book burnings of material like Harry Potter. I'm not saying that the accusations of cancel culture are unfounded, I'm saying they are wildly hypocritical. (It's good that efforts at censorship on the right are raised in the article as a pressing concern, the point is that this is not new, in fact it looks to me like the 'left' are the newcomers at the censor-burn-suppress game)
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Legitimate boycotts are against stuff that people are currently doing bad, and they end when the bad stuff does. Cancel culture goes after people that tweeted something bad 15 years ago, that they've already recanted and apologized for, and never ends.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal? Are these legitimate boycotts? > they end when the bad stuff does I would dispute this too, actually. Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet", which is nicely capitalist behaviour. Regardless, whichever way you want to define legitimate vs illegitimate, the US right have been doing it for generations.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal? Yes. The people doing those boycotts believe those things are actively causing harm to people. I don't agree, of course, but that doesn't make them illegitimate. > Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet", which is nicely capitalist behaviour. Imagine you lived in the first century AD, and you boycotted everything Saul of Tarsus was involved with, because of the religious persecution he committed. After he had his conversion and became Paul the Apostle, would you really continue to boycott him?
encryptluks2 5y ago
While I don't agree with censorship, I think that companies are smart in censoring any fringe ideas, even if those viewpoints ultimately the accepted norm. As soon as a business takes a political stand, then they paint a huge target on their back from legislators and the majority who are fine with them just toeing the line somewhere in the middle. Statistically (which I'm sure they've done studies) it doesn't work in their favor, which a large business usually has one goal which is profit, to align themselves one way or another.
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"As soon as a business takes a political stand, then they paint a huge target on their back" Well it does not seem to scare big gorillas of companies. Their type of censorship screams "political stand"
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    It does to an extent, but the majority of users complaining about it are like the Twitter users complaining about it on Twitter and the YouTubers complaining about censorship on YouTube. In order for those companies to change their strategy they would have to see a mass exodus of users due to their actions. With the number one priority of large corporations being profit, they will continue to justify the censorship of a few until it impacts their profits.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      >"It does to an extent, but ..." "but" part does not matter. There is always an explanation why they do it. Does not make it any better.
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        I don't disagree. It can be hard to put yourself into the shoes of someone that you wouldn't make the same choices as, but I'm just trying to explain why they are making those choices. Bottom line is they will keep doing it until it hurts their profits.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
akomtu 5y ago
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - useragent86 5y ago
    Mind-boggling, Dan. What did he say that even remotely comes close to "ideological flamewar hell"? Is "leftists" the keyword? Is criticism of "today's leftists" forbidden here? Meanwhile this thread[0] that rants about the supposed evils of the "US right" (burning Harry Potter books? complaining abut D&D and heavy metal? what is this, 1995?) is not flagged, not dead, and not officially chastised, despite being several levels deep and the originator having doubled-down on the flamebait. And then, when people say that HN comments seem biased toward the left, you express bewilderment. As I've said before, whether or not you personally apply moderation fairly, the fact is that the community does not, and the leftist bias is obvious. It's much like the supposed bias in policing: if people of one group get the cops called on them, and the people of another group don't, then even if the cops are fair in their interactions, which group are they going to end up policing? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30239153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30239153
    - hansel_der 5y ago
      do you really expect an answer/discussion? looks like you just want to voice you disagreement.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      It's absolutely pertinent to bring up D&D in response to an article that says the "new right" is now engaging in censorship. The old right sure as hell did, too. Nothing new to see here.
    - 5y ago
JetAlone 5y ago
I think censorship actually could help us in a huge way back to cultural health; start censoring big data, rage cycle algorithms, sexploitation, advertising. Then on top of that giving people independent, client-based, advanced AI powered tools en masse, and making sure they know how to use them and why, for accurate elected censorship on their own devices of things they personally find detrimental to their mental health. Basically, do what you can to allow for the censorship of the influence of the people with money, onto the people without it. Unfortunately, it's unrealistic to expect this to happen on a big enough scale to overturn the profitability of the effects we've already seen. So it's still centralized censorship by the people with power, onto the people without it, which badly damages everyone's mental health and in particular the general societal trust, especially on the part of anyone hit by it.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  It might easily happen via antitrust intervention. The big internet companies might be forced to adopt federated standards and "open up" their big walled-garden platforms to enable free interaction among users across different "social" service providers. Then the service providers would start to compete and differentiate by adopting things like user-facing AI scores for content. The feasibility of this varies by platform; it seems especially hard for some platforms like YouTube or TikTok, which are doing the "core" work of hosting video content and providing recommendations. Others though might be easier.
  - JetAlone 5y ago
    It will never be perfect, there'll always be someone trying to exploit a power vacuum, but we'll see how things go. There's a possibility some changes could make our situations improve more than they deteriorate. It's worth being a little optimistic...
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    To play devil's advocate: Won't a thousand small operators be encouraged to maximize engagement to maintain their tenuous existence, and thus keep up or even accelerate the outrage cycle? This is exactly what we've seen with a thousand small content providers; why will having a thousand aggregators fix it? There's similar questions for privacy and security. Why would smaller operators - under less scrutiny - resist the temptation to sell or exploit detailed user data? This was the Uber model, after all: Give every employee full access to the DB until the company is big enough that anyone cares. How many small companies have terrible privacy practices that we've just never heard about?
devmor 5y ago
"Cultural Health" is a meaningless term. Replace it with "what I think is good" and you have the author's true meaning. This isn't a "think piece" - it's a paid political opinion piece complaining that current events will not produce the outcome the author desires. Why is this on HN at all?
- vehemenz 5y ago
  If I understood what he meant, and you didn't, what accounts for our difference in understanding? The "author" is David French—not exactly an obscure figure.
  - devmor 5y ago
    You "understood" what he meant because what he meant is a vague term meant to be taken differently depending on who reads it.
    - vehemenz 5y ago
      You're very quick to dismiss others' opinions. What have you done to earn the benefit of the doubt? Instead of assuming the error is on my end, maybe you should try engaging the author critically and charitably.
wonnage 5y ago
The article never once tries to define what it thinks would be good "cultural health". You can kinda infer that the current level of vitriol and animosity is bad, but what kind of society would that look like and how would we get there? I can see three versions. First is a homogenous culture where there is nothing to fight culture wars over. I don't think such a thing is possible, nor desirable, since the author's free speech argument rests on a diversity of thought angle. Another is a culture where people are free to disagree but do so respectfully and are willing to compromise on the larger issues. This sounds good on paper but the truth is a disturbing minority of this country believes Trump won the 2020 election, that COVID is at once a harmless prop for a government powergrab, and also a Chinese bioweapon, that climate change is a lie, that gun ownership is sacred, that abortion is murder, etc. Ignoring your personal stance on these issues, how would one compromise on any of them? I believe climate change is an existential threat, we're already careening past the point of no return, the time for debate ended some time around 2007, and you still want to talk about it on Twitter? Lastly is a culture where you're simply not allowed to disagree, and perhaps this is where the path of least resistance has led us. We use AI to separate like-minded folks into clusters so they can avoid arguing with each other, and as a bonus we can sell a few trillion dollars worth of ads to them. Citizens can head to some culturally-appropriate venues for disagreement (i.e, the Youtube comment section) when we feel like tilting at some windmills.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  The disturbing minority has always been there, we just didn't used to take those fringe ideas seriously. 'Compromise' with the radical fringe is not inherently required.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    The proper social immune response is mockery, not outrage or negotiation.
    - vore 5y ago
      Is it though? I don't think any of us know the answer, which is why we're in such a predicament.
g42gregory 5y ago
I feel that nation could not censor its way back to anything good, whether it’s cultural health or anything else. The only place where censorship thrives is a totalitarian society, whether Socialist or National Socialist on the spectrum.
Pxtl 5y ago
The reason 21st century young people have come around against free speech is quite simply because they've experienced it in its purest form: the 2000s internet. The upside: we all pirated a crapload of good music. The downside: new era of fascism. And it's worth noting that the piracy, which is in itself a form of speech, was shut down... But the racism wasn't. Like, if I copied and pasted the above Dispatch article into the comment below, what would happen? Would I get moderated down? Banned for copyright infringement? C&Dd? We all believe in limitations to speech. Copyright infringement, threats, fraud... I mean go ask a C-level working on a merger how "free" their speech is about the state of the company. We protect a zillion things with restrictions on speech via the legal system. We protect the legal system with laws against perjury and filing false reports. We protect business interests from fraud. We protect consumers from false advertising. We protect anybody who can afford a good lawyer from defamation. But we don't protect public health. Rebroadcasting Hulk Hogan's video will get your business obliterated, but telling Grandma that vaccines are fake, ultimately leading to her untimely death? Totally fine. Lying about climate change? Totally fine. Lying about democracy? Totally fine. Tricking hundreds of people into invading the capitol with lies about a stolen election? Well that's okay... except for the voting company you lied about. They have grounds for a lawsuit. The people who were beaten and terrorized in the capitol probably don't. The line is arbitrary.
- nervlord 5y ago
- polski-g 5y ago
  - Rovoska 5y ago
    - Gwarzo 5y ago
      Why is that bogus? He's just making an extremely loose claim. We do know with certainty global testosterone and sperm count is going down.
Rovoska 5y ago
issa 5y ago
I have a foreign wife and it really drives home one truth: America is a very nuanced place. We have this idea of almost unlimited free speech. Which sounds great, but in practice, it is not really true. Because ultimately, Americans do not have equal rights. We see this over and over in different aspects of society. The Frederick Douglas example from Boston in the article is a great example of why free speech is good. But the truth is it is the same kind of people who are always preventing free speech in meaningful ways. If your takeaway from the speech is that "all kinds of speech need to be heard", you might be philosophically correct. But, again, in practice, the people in power do not allow free speech. And this is fundamentally different from most examples of cancel culture.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  We should remember that the term free speech was coined many hundreds of years ago. During that timeframe, talking against the current ruler could lead to one’s death.
  - 6510 5y ago
    What you say still has consequences. Those might not be ideal at any time. The question is if you should be allowed to say it. If the line would be drawn there we must then discuss what you are allowed to think.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      The problem today is that when what one says doesn’t have the desired consequences of some group, they then attempt to change the rules and stifle speech. This is why the line, which I acknowledge there is a legal line of free speech, should be clearly enumerated (which it is). And any company moving the line should be held accountable.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  I’m a bit confused. Is your wife from a more less equal/free place than America?
WalterBright 5y ago
Anyone remember the Hay's Code? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code The result was 20 years of crappy movies.
- sb057 5y ago
  Say what you will about the Hays Code, but I would hardly consider Gone With the Wind, The Great Dictator, Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Psycho, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, Paths of Glory, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, or, you know, Citizen Kane to be especially "crappy" movies.
  - myrion 5y ago
    Gone with the Wind is probably the big exception - well done, for sure, but blatant pro-South propaganda...
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Most of the movies you mentioned were made after 1953. (The Hays code started in 1934.) You substantiated my point! Just for fun, watch several movies 1930-32. Then watch some in 34-35. It's like the life got sucked out of them. Yes, I know there were exceptions. One is "Top Hat", 1935, which skirted the Code with double-talk and innuendo. > When the Hays Office learned that several actors, who were known within the industry to be gay, had been cast in this film, they sent a terse warning to RKO Studios. Particularly, in regards to Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton, they warned that they should "avoid any idea of actors being pansy in character." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027125/trivia?item=tr2614567 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027125/trivia?item=tr2614567 Nevertheless, Rhodes still got in his lines.
    - js2 5y ago
      I’ll play: The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Casablanca (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Great Expectations (1946), The Big Sleep (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), All About Eve (1950), A Place In The Sun (1951), High Noon (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), The Wages of Fear (1953). (I slipped two French films in.) Almost anything by Hawks during those years. Or Hitchcock. Almost anything with Bogart. Or Grant. Or by Wilder. Tons of noir films skirted the rules. Look, I’m not a fan of the Hays code but some of those movies were to me better because of what they had to imply. This is after the Hays code but as an example I recently watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and the remake. I hated the remake. What appeals to me about Elmore Leonard stories is that despite being about bad guys, they have a degree of charm to them (Out of Sight, Justified, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty,etc). The remake took all of the charm out of the original and replaced it with graphic violence and cruelty.
beebmam 5y ago
Twitter isn't a nation, nor is Spotify
- hansel_der 5y ago
  in case you missed it https://hn.algolia.com/?query=A%20Declaration%20of%20the%20Independence%20of%20Cyberspace&type=story&dateRange=all&sort=byDate&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=A%20Declaration%20of%20the%20I...
  - TheRealNGenius 5y ago
    I missed that thanks
archhn 5y ago
We live in a post-cultural nation. There cannot be one culture for a nation this diverse. Only the most bland, overly sanitized, vapid, consumerist culture can survive on the national level. Are you a PC or a Mac guy? Do you like Coke or Pepsi? A culture revolving around things because they have nothing to polarizing to say about how we should interpret and live our lives...a post-human wasteland.
dusted 5y ago
The application of censorship itself, not what is being censored, is the main symptom of the declining cultural health. The mentality that there are so universally wrong and right things that the right ones must be forced upon any mind, no matter the context, and the wrong ones must be extinguished no matter the context.
- synaesthesisx 5y ago
  Censorship is inherently dangerous because it can be weaponized to silence dissenting minorities.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > Censorship is inherently dangerous because it can be weaponized to silence dissenting minorities. It's its main purpose. The word "can" in your sentence is a bit too generous.
- suslik 5y ago
  Unfortunately, this. Censorship on moral grounds, amplified by a lack of epistemic humility, is a key characteristic of modern western culture. Not only western, and modern, of course - I suspect that the feeling that 'I am more correct than the other' is a natural property of consciousness itself; an understanding of one's own mind is always more intuitive than a theory of mind. Anyways, I feel - and would be great to be wrong here - that there is no technocratic solution to prevent censorship in the context of culture that demands, even begs for it. Splitting facebook, making twitter a utility, developing government-controlled platforms - none of these sound convincing.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    > epistemic humility Doesn't mix with political speech too well since most political cultures punish uncertainty, which is always prevalent in any intellectual discourse. I too believe there is no technical solution for or against censorship. Luckily digital infrastructure is at least robust against censorship because some very wise people could look beyond the horizon. But people asking for content control need to have their education improved. And to a degree they also have to be demasked, because arguing against freedom of expressions in the name of minorities is beyond reasonable.
Animats 5y ago
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” ― W.B. Yeats That was written in 1919 and published in 1920. So the US has been there before. Came back from there, but it took a depression and a world war. We might get both of those soon.
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  I’m honestly surprised people see this as anything new.
- erwincoumans 5y ago
  That is disturbing, what makes you think so? Ukraine and Taiwan situations?
dirtyid 5y ago
"he noted that there exists not just a right to speak but a right to hear" Is that so? I don't see why a speaker is entitled to an audience, let alone access to mass private communication.
- strawhatguy 5y ago
  Where did Frederick Douglas say anyone was entitled to an audience? The speaker has a right to speak, but cannot demand others listen. The listener has a right to hear, but cannot demand others to speak. The speech he gives is amazing to read, he goes further: "Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money."
- originalvichy 5y ago
  That’s not what he means by right to hear. The government or anyone else barring one from entering a lecture is preventing one’s freedom to hear. It’s pretty obvious that freedom of speech also implies freedom to attend speeches
jacquesm 5y ago
The assumption here is that there ever was a state of cultural health to begin with. I really do not believe that that was ever the case, and if you start out from such a broken premise I really wonder if the decisions you make will move you in the right direction. The bigger question for me is whether or not absolute free speech and true democracy are fundamentally compatible or not and I have not seen proof of that. Either camp is stuck in that it is either a prerequisite or that it is impossible without any movement towards a practical middle.
- Jtype 5y ago
  That sounds like a pedantic discussion of the meaning of the word "health." What the author is referring to is the cohesion of society. The "health" is the ability for us to get along and reduce the infighting.
0dayz 5y ago
I Wil admit this will come off as "omg nazi" hysteria, however I've always felt that nazis alongside every other fascistic ideology (including bolshevism). With that said, one of the problems I've heard about almost unlimited free speech is the same paradox about tolerating the intolerable, but in this case it's having political entities take advantage of their free speech and knowingly break the law to silence others speech. And in a way I think it's what is happening here (although not always by breaking the law). Even though I support USA free speech I can't argue with that point without doing mental gymnast ics or setting up hopeful premises.
RickJWagner 5y ago
ladyattis 5y ago
I'm going to say that censorship itself has never been a bug in society but rather a feature of how societies organize their ideologies formally and informally. In the case of Fredrick Douglas' speech being censored by a violent mob and the police bowing to the mob in the end are examples of how societies function in this case. I'm not saying censorship is good or bad but imagining the United States is separate from other societies in having a legal norm of free speech doesn't eliminate the social norms (formal and informal) that violate the spirit and law of free speech. And there's not been much effort in the years between the highlighted event and now that has changed this behavior in the United States or elsewhere. More than ever, we're seeing all societies turning to censorship and self-selection to avoid conflict even if said conflict is inevitable and that maybe heated discussions and insults would be kinder than bullets and fists. The real problem here is how do we break the social norms that induce censorship? The law itself isn't sufficient and making a "mandatory free speech" kind of law seems contradictory since the right to speak comes with the implied right to not hear the speaker. So I'm all ears on what everyone here thinks we can do to resolve the matter.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > The real problem here is how do we break the social norms that induce censorship? This is what Marcuse invented his "Repressive Tolerance" for. Platform censored, unfashionable ideas everywhere, irrespective of their underlying merits - and strive to deplatform fashionable, censorious ones. The point was not to defend society against anything inherently problematic, contrary to what's sometimes claimed - but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. It's pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name.

353 points by steelstraw 5y ago

One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.

tandymodel100 5y ago
api 5y ago
Outside extreme examples like child porn or speech that is copyright violation I am not aware of many cases of actual prohibited speech in the US. Schools however are a grey area because attendance is mandatory and the state sets the curriculum.
- rayiner 5y ago
  It’s not a gray area at all. Public schools are a public service paid for by tax dollars. The government excluding certain things from the curriculum doesn’t implicate freedom of speech any more than it excluding certain bus routes implicates freedom of movement.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Forced curriculum on students, at all, is no different than re-education camps; state sponsored indoctrination that both political parties (currently) support. All education should be consensual
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      You're essentially saying school vouchers, and then the government doesn't choose the curriculum at private schools. In a public school there isn't anyone else there to choose the curriculum. Everyone there is a government employee.
      - beebmam 5y ago
        No, I'm arguing that forced schooling in general is an unethical act, on par with communist indoctrination, and there should be no government run schools at all
Sebb767 5y ago
He actually handles that distinction early in the article as a quote: > [...] he noted that there exists not just a right to speak but a right to hear. “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” But this is of course a gray area. You don't have to listen to anything anyone has to say, but it's also possible to sideline something enough that it is effectively censored without being outright forbidden.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  I don't see how that quote addresses it. Wouldn't the relevant right be a "right not to hear", which he doesn't mention? > You don't have to listen to anything anyone has to say If you're a student, and it's in the state mandated curriculum, then you do. > it's also possible to sideline something enough that it is effectively censored without being outright forbidden. I 100% agree with this.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    > I don't see how that quote addresses it. Wouldn't the relevant right be a "right not to hear", which he doesn't mention? You're right, I misread your comment. He really does not differenciate this clearly, despite having examples for both cases.
- rayiner 5y ago
  That’s completely inapposite to the point being made above. Choosing a curriculum is about curation—it has nothing at all to do with free speech, neither in the legal sense, nor in the broader “free speech values” sense.
klyrs 5y ago
> Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school.” Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Isn't this still the same distinction? That's still just saying that nobody can force students to learn about critical race theory, not that they can't go read about it on their own if they want.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    No, it says that critical race theory cannot be offered. That's specific and distinct from required.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      Ah, I see: that affects whether it's allowed to be taught in an elective class or not. Yes, to fully oppose censorship, we should allow critical race theory to be taught in optional elective social studies classes. But then we should also allow optional elective science classes to teach that evolution is wrong, because to do otherwise would be censoring the young-Earth creationists.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        If you can find a way to teach that without violating the Establishment Clause, sure. The only way forward I can see here would look like a comparative history of religions course, which would teach various creation stories from a neutral viewpoint. And that doesn't seem to be what those campaigning for anti-evolution education have been looking for. Curious if you've got any fresh ideas, though.
        5y ago
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
You are correct. Not sure why you're getting down voted. Just because Pinocchio isn't in the curriculum doesn't mean it's banned. You can still get it in the school library. Not in curriculum != Banned
- tandymodel100 5y ago
imgabe 5y ago
I don’t remember the case, but I read somewhere that the Supreme Court drew a distinction between deciding not to add something vs taking away what was already there in regards to school libraries. Assuming this is referring to Maus, it wasn’t a part of the curriculum, it was just a book that was available in the library. The school board removed it from the library, clearly in an effort to limit access to it.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I'm not in favor of book banning, but that book shouldn't be allowed in a library.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    Why not? I’ve heard of it but never read it. I just know it’s widely acclaimed and about the Holocaust.
  - sixstringtheory 5y ago
    I’ve never seen/read it, curious to know why you think it shouldn’t be allowed in libraries.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    P.S. That was sarcasm.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dgellow 5y ago
    I get the irony but in the current context that doesn’t really read as a joke.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  > Assuming this is referring to Maus, it wasn’t a part of the curriculum. It was.[1] [1] https://www.wate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/01/Called_Meeting_Minutes_1-10-22.pdf https://www.wate.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/01/Cal...
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Also, when it comes to publication, plenty of stuff used to be essentially banned by 'platforms', it just wasn't obvious because "user-generated content" was barely a thing (letters to the editor) in comparison to people posting on Facebook and Youtube and Twitter and Tiktok. Random people being able to post content for thousands or even millions to immediately see, with no explicit gatekeepers prior to submission; this is largely a recent thing. And it makes sense that of course everywhere has rules, bare minimum basically nobody likes people spamming stuff, for example, even in cases where it's legal. If you create a message board about model trains and some rando starts constantly spamming ads for their series of NFT's, I guess banning them is technically 'censorship', but you could also call it 'the bare basics of maintaining a functional community'. I think that for platforms like Twitter and Facebook, perhaps it may make more sense to end up a situation more like newspapers, where you have more reputable papers like the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ that have stricter rules, and then you also have the National Enquirer or other random outlets that have little to no standards. If Twitter and Facebook want to have somewhat tighter rules where they censor people, that's fine, the people being censored should then just have options of other platforms with different or fewer rules. Just seems like the problem to me is that people expect these mega platforms to be all things to all people, when that's probably not realistic.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam. Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis. Free speech protects good faith debates.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    > Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis. It's not a strawman, as many people assert that platforms should just let anything not-illegal stay up. You may not believe this, but there are others who I've seen assert it. > Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam. It's not the same, but the issue is that once you're past the border of "we'll only ban illegal stuff", you're now in the realm of much more subjective decisionmaking. In practice, many forms of speech could be classified as both political, and harassment/bullying/other bad stuff, which is what usually happens with Facebook. In their case, they don't want to get into the political sphere, but they do want to bad blatant misinformation, and in practice that does overlap with politics.
pyuser583 5y ago
I think we really need to have a “who controls the curriculum” conversation. When I was a teacher, we could chose from whatever the books the school had a ton of lying around. Not a good way to make a selection. At the same time, people are freaking out when parents want a say I what books their children are evaluated on. If it was up to me, we’d focus on the classics: Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, etc.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Important to not accidentally let any 20th century books into the curriculum, let alone any 21st century ones?
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    Sorry, I meant to include Gilgamesh ;)
coffeeblack 5y ago
And then there is the new “cancel culture” that does not target the speech itself, but the reputation of the author. By using horrific accusations and smears, the author’s reputation is destroyed, so that people don’t want to hear the speech anymore, based on the lies they heard about the author.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
GolfPopper 5y ago
Another confusing facet of the debate is a significant number of participants who equate not being given an audience or a trivially-used press (in the form of a popular website) with being censored.

JohnTHaller 5y ago

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

refurb 5y ago
I come to HN for a diversity of opinion. I'm more interested in the ideas than the ideology of the authors. Good ideas can come from anywhere.
- thereare5lights 5y ago
  There is no diversity of opinion here though. Liberal leaning articles get flagged and removed all the time. When if/when they're unflagged by mods, they remain buried.
- version_five 5y ago
  Yeah, there is a flag button for inappropriate content. Outside of that, provenance should be irrelevant. But it's often leveled as an ad-hominem style attack when people don't actually have something to contribute
- asveikau 5y ago
  I feel like the recent thread on Joe Rogan was a bit less "diversity of opinion" and more "a large crowd expressing fringe narratives". While most people in other places were talking about Joe Rogan's support for ivermectin, telling people to avoid vaccines, or platforming the guy who calls pandemic response "mass psychosis", over here, the story was that Spotify was censoring him, and what an outrage that is.

tomlockwood 5y ago

I think this article misses one big point which is how we - the people on this website - have actively constructed a world where advertisers can shift spend really quickly. Brand safety is a big reason for censorship - the idea of keeping ads for a company away from content that people might not like. YouTube demonetizes loads and loads of controversial topics across the political spectrum - and that's a Feature for advertisers. This milquetoast move to the middle of the road is just those advertising platforms we all built, working as intended. ed: And Another Thing, that time when YouTube was free and people were free to post what they wanted? Yeah that was when the company was running out of runway and relying on VC-type money. The VCs didn't give a toss about brand safety.

wayoutthere 5y ago
That’s not censorship, it’s editorial oversight.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  Editors censor things!
  - gpm 5y ago
    No, editors choose not to have the organization they work for say things, censoring things is stopping other people and organizations from saying things, not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things. This is just a bit strange on the internet, because so much of what we see is one organization exactly repeating what someone else said on their request, so it's the organization saying it, but it feels like maybe it isn't.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      > not stopping the organization you are part of from saying things. I think nations are organizations. That term is, very vague.
kevin_nisbet 5y ago

wayoutthere 5y ago

I believe in freedom of speech. What I do not believe in is freedom of mass speech. Your responsibility to the truth should increase in line with your reach. Have 1000 followers in twitter and want to talk about starting the next holocaust? Great, say whatever. A million followers? Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.

jrpt 5y ago
Who defines what the truth is? The mainstream? That didn't work out too well for Galileo.
EricE 5y ago
>"I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone." At least in the US you can't enforce it - and yes, any lunatic can grab a megaphone if they want. The best way to handle problematic speech is more speech, NOT less. Trying to pretend lunatics don't exist is irrational and often a pretext to just block people that others disagree with. Screw that. Safest place for lunatics is out in the open, not driven underground.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Well the way things are headed, we’ll be fighting it out in the open IRL soon.
  - EricE 5y ago
    Good. Too many have let things like blatant censorship go on for too long. It's time for more people to be uncomfortable, if for just a little. We are drowning in a morass of complacency :p
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >Well the way things are headed, we’ll be fighting it out in the open IRL soon. If so, I think it will be along the lines of two people get into a fight. After about 5 seconds, they are exhausted and realize that getting into a fight was a really bad idea. They will soon stop and hopefully grab a beer together afterwords, perhaps to argue politics some more.

EricE 5y ago

Pretty sad when it's clear that Douglass would be cancelled in todays culture :p

poink 5y ago
That's not at all clear.

Nursie 5y ago

The rants about "cancel culture" from the US right are hilarious, given their long history of boycotts of brands they dislike and escalating hate and fear for everything up to actual book burnings of material like Harry Potter. I'm not saying that the accusations of cancel culture are unfounded, I'm saying they are wildly hypocritical. (It's good that efforts at censorship on the right are raised in the article as a pressing concern, the point is that this is not new, in fact it looks to me like the 'left' are the newcomers at the censor-burn-suppress game)

josephcsible 5y ago
Legitimate boycotts are against stuff that people are currently doing bad, and they end when the bad stuff does. Cancel culture goes after people that tweeted something bad 15 years ago, that they've already recanted and apologized for, and never ends.
- Nursie 5y ago
  And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal? Are these legitimate boycotts? > they end when the bad stuff does I would dispute this too, actually. Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet", which is nicely capitalist behaviour. Regardless, whichever way you want to define legitimate vs illegitimate, the US right have been doing it for generations.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > And burning Harry Potter books? Trying to fearmonger about D&D and heavy metal? Yes. The people doing those boycotts believe those things are actively causing harm to people. I don't agree, of course, but that doesn't make them illegitimate. > Once you've proven yourself to be a shitbag, I'm not going back to your products ever if I can help it. Nothing illegitimate about that, it's called "voting with your wallet", which is nicely capitalist behaviour. Imagine you lived in the first century AD, and you boycotted everything Saul of Tarsus was involved with, because of the religious persecution he committed. After he had his conversion and became Paul the Apostle, would you really continue to boycott him?

encryptluks2 5y ago

While I don't agree with censorship, I think that companies are smart in censoring any fringe ideas, even if those viewpoints ultimately the accepted norm. As soon as a business takes a political stand, then they paint a huge target on their back from legislators and the majority who are fine with them just toeing the line somewhere in the middle. Statistically (which I'm sure they've done studies) it doesn't work in their favor, which a large business usually has one goal which is profit, to align themselves one way or another.

FpUser 5y ago
>"As soon as a business takes a political stand, then they paint a huge target on their back" Well it does not seem to scare big gorillas of companies. Their type of censorship screams "political stand"
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  It does to an extent, but the majority of users complaining about it are like the Twitter users complaining about it on Twitter and the YouTubers complaining about censorship on YouTube. In order for those companies to change their strategy they would have to see a mass exodus of users due to their actions. With the number one priority of large corporations being profit, they will continue to justify the censorship of a few until it impacts their profits.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    >"It does to an extent, but ..." "but" part does not matter. There is always an explanation why they do it. Does not make it any better.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      I don't disagree. It can be hard to put yourself into the shoes of someone that you wouldn't make the same choices as, but I'm just trying to explain why they are making those choices. Bottom line is they will keep doing it until it hurts their profits.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

akomtu 5y ago

dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- useragent86 5y ago
  Mind-boggling, Dan. What did he say that even remotely comes close to "ideological flamewar hell"? Is "leftists" the keyword? Is criticism of "today's leftists" forbidden here? Meanwhile this thread[0] that rants about the supposed evils of the "US right" (burning Harry Potter books? complaining abut D&D and heavy metal? what is this, 1995?) is not flagged, not dead, and not officially chastised, despite being several levels deep and the originator having doubled-down on the flamebait. And then, when people say that HN comments seem biased toward the left, you express bewilderment. As I've said before, whether or not you personally apply moderation fairly, the fact is that the community does not, and the leftist bias is obvious. It's much like the supposed bias in policing: if people of one group get the cops called on them, and the people of another group don't, then even if the cops are fair in their interactions, which group are they going to end up policing? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30239153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30239153
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    do you really expect an answer/discussion? looks like you just want to voice you disagreement.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    It's absolutely pertinent to bring up D&D in response to an article that says the "new right" is now engaging in censorship. The old right sure as hell did, too. Nothing new to see here.
  - 5y ago

JetAlone 5y ago

I think censorship actually could help us in a huge way back to cultural health; start censoring big data, rage cycle algorithms, sexploitation, advertising. Then on top of that giving people independent, client-based, advanced AI powered tools en masse, and making sure they know how to use them and why, for accurate elected censorship on their own devices of things they personally find detrimental to their mental health. Basically, do what you can to allow for the censorship of the influence of the people with money, onto the people without it. Unfortunately, it's unrealistic to expect this to happen on a big enough scale to overturn the profitability of the effects we've already seen. So it's still centralized censorship by the people with power, onto the people without it, which badly damages everyone's mental health and in particular the general societal trust, especially on the part of anyone hit by it.

zozbot234 5y ago
It might easily happen via antitrust intervention. The big internet companies might be forced to adopt federated standards and "open up" their big walled-garden platforms to enable free interaction among users across different "social" service providers. Then the service providers would start to compete and differentiate by adopting things like user-facing AI scores for content. The feasibility of this varies by platform; it seems especially hard for some platforms like YouTube or TikTok, which are doing the "core" work of hosting video content and providing recommendations. Others though might be easier.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  It will never be perfect, there'll always be someone trying to exploit a power vacuum, but we'll see how things go. There's a possibility some changes could make our situations improve more than they deteriorate. It's worth being a little optimistic...
- sdenton4 5y ago
  To play devil's advocate: Won't a thousand small operators be encouraged to maximize engagement to maintain their tenuous existence, and thus keep up or even accelerate the outrage cycle? This is exactly what we've seen with a thousand small content providers; why will having a thousand aggregators fix it? There's similar questions for privacy and security. Why would smaller operators - under less scrutiny - resist the temptation to sell or exploit detailed user data? This was the Uber model, after all: Give every employee full access to the DB until the company is big enough that anyone cares. How many small companies have terrible privacy practices that we've just never heard about?

devmor 5y ago

"Cultural Health" is a meaningless term. Replace it with "what I think is good" and you have the author's true meaning. This isn't a "think piece" - it's a paid political opinion piece complaining that current events will not produce the outcome the author desires. Why is this on HN at all?

vehemenz 5y ago
If I understood what he meant, and you didn't, what accounts for our difference in understanding? The "author" is David French—not exactly an obscure figure.
- devmor 5y ago
  You "understood" what he meant because what he meant is a vague term meant to be taken differently depending on who reads it.
  - vehemenz 5y ago
    You're very quick to dismiss others' opinions. What have you done to earn the benefit of the doubt? Instead of assuming the error is on my end, maybe you should try engaging the author critically and charitably.

wonnage 5y ago

The article never once tries to define what it thinks would be good "cultural health". You can kinda infer that the current level of vitriol and animosity is bad, but what kind of society would that look like and how would we get there? I can see three versions. First is a homogenous culture where there is nothing to fight culture wars over. I don't think such a thing is possible, nor desirable, since the author's free speech argument rests on a diversity of thought angle. Another is a culture where people are free to disagree but do so respectfully and are willing to compromise on the larger issues. This sounds good on paper but the truth is a disturbing minority of this country believes Trump won the 2020 election, that COVID is at once a harmless prop for a government powergrab, and also a Chinese bioweapon, that climate change is a lie, that gun ownership is sacred, that abortion is murder, etc. Ignoring your personal stance on these issues, how would one compromise on any of them? I believe climate change is an existential threat, we're already careening past the point of no return, the time for debate ended some time around 2007, and you still want to talk about it on Twitter? Lastly is a culture where you're simply not allowed to disagree, and perhaps this is where the path of least resistance has led us. We use AI to separate like-minded folks into clusters so they can avoid arguing with each other, and as a bonus we can sell a few trillion dollars worth of ads to them. Citizens can head to some culturally-appropriate venues for disagreement (i.e, the Youtube comment section) when we feel like tilting at some windmills.

zozbot234 5y ago
The disturbing minority has always been there, we just didn't used to take those fringe ideas seriously. 'Compromise' with the radical fringe is not inherently required.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  The proper social immune response is mockery, not outrage or negotiation.
  - vore 5y ago
    Is it though? I don't think any of us know the answer, which is why we're in such a predicament.

g42gregory 5y ago

I feel that nation could not censor its way back to anything good, whether it’s cultural health or anything else. The only place where censorship thrives is a totalitarian society, whether Socialist or National Socialist on the spectrum.

Pxtl 5y ago

The reason 21st century young people have come around against free speech is quite simply because they've experienced it in its purest form: the 2000s internet. The upside: we all pirated a crapload of good music. The downside: new era of fascism. And it's worth noting that the piracy, which is in itself a form of speech, was shut down... But the racism wasn't. Like, if I copied and pasted the above Dispatch article into the comment below, what would happen? Would I get moderated down? Banned for copyright infringement? C&Dd? We all believe in limitations to speech. Copyright infringement, threats, fraud... I mean go ask a C-level working on a merger how "free" their speech is about the state of the company. We protect a zillion things with restrictions on speech via the legal system. We protect the legal system with laws against perjury and filing false reports. We protect business interests from fraud. We protect consumers from false advertising. We protect anybody who can afford a good lawyer from defamation. But we don't protect public health. Rebroadcasting Hulk Hogan's video will get your business obliterated, but telling Grandma that vaccines are fake, ultimately leading to her untimely death? Totally fine. Lying about climate change? Totally fine. Lying about democracy? Totally fine. Tricking hundreds of people into invading the capitol with lies about a stolen election? Well that's okay... except for the voting company you lied about. They have grounds for a lawsuit. The people who were beaten and terrorized in the capitol probably don't. The line is arbitrary.

nervlord 5y ago
polski-g 5y ago
- Rovoska 5y ago
  - Gwarzo 5y ago
    Why is that bogus? He's just making an extremely loose claim. We do know with certainty global testosterone and sperm count is going down.

Rovoska 5y ago

issa 5y ago

I have a foreign wife and it really drives home one truth: America is a very nuanced place. We have this idea of almost unlimited free speech. Which sounds great, but in practice, it is not really true. Because ultimately, Americans do not have equal rights. We see this over and over in different aspects of society. The Frederick Douglas example from Boston in the article is a great example of why free speech is good. But the truth is it is the same kind of people who are always preventing free speech in meaningful ways. If your takeaway from the speech is that "all kinds of speech need to be heard", you might be philosophically correct. But, again, in practice, the people in power do not allow free speech. And this is fundamentally different from most examples of cancel culture.

bushbaba 5y ago
We should remember that the term free speech was coined many hundreds of years ago. During that timeframe, talking against the current ruler could lead to one’s death.
- 6510 5y ago
  What you say still has consequences. Those might not be ideal at any time. The question is if you should be allowed to say it. If the line would be drawn there we must then discuss what you are allowed to think.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    The problem today is that when what one says doesn’t have the desired consequences of some group, they then attempt to change the rules and stifle speech. This is why the line, which I acknowledge there is a legal line of free speech, should be clearly enumerated (which it is). And any company moving the line should be held accountable.
pyuser583 5y ago
I’m a bit confused. Is your wife from a more less equal/free place than America?

WalterBright 5y ago

Anyone remember the Hay's Code? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code The result was 20 years of crappy movies.

sb057 5y ago
Say what you will about the Hays Code, but I would hardly consider Gone With the Wind, The Great Dictator, Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Psycho, West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, Paths of Glory, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, or, you know, Citizen Kane to be especially "crappy" movies.
- myrion 5y ago
  Gone with the Wind is probably the big exception - well done, for sure, but blatant pro-South propaganda...
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Most of the movies you mentioned were made after 1953. (The Hays code started in 1934.) You substantiated my point! Just for fun, watch several movies 1930-32. Then watch some in 34-35. It's like the life got sucked out of them. Yes, I know there were exceptions. One is "Top Hat", 1935, which skirted the Code with double-talk and innuendo. > When the Hays Office learned that several actors, who were known within the industry to be gay, had been cast in this film, they sent a terse warning to RKO Studios. Particularly, in regards to Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton, they warned that they should "avoid any idea of actors being pansy in character." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027125/trivia?item=tr2614567 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027125/trivia?item=tr2614567 Nevertheless, Rhodes still got in his lines.
  - js2 5y ago
    I’ll play: The Thin Man (1934), It Happened One Night (1934), Dodworth (1936), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), You Only Live Once (1937), Wizard of Oz (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Philadelphia Story (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), A Woman’s Face (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Casablanca (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Great Expectations (1946), The Big Sleep (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), All About Eve (1950), A Place In The Sun (1951), High Noon (1952), Roman Holiday (1953), The Wages of Fear (1953). (I slipped two French films in.) Almost anything by Hawks during those years. Or Hitchcock. Almost anything with Bogart. Or Grant. Or by Wilder. Tons of noir films skirted the rules. Look, I’m not a fan of the Hays code but some of those movies were to me better because of what they had to imply. This is after the Hays code but as an example I recently watched the original 3:10 to Yuma and the remake. I hated the remake. What appeals to me about Elmore Leonard stories is that despite being about bad guys, they have a degree of charm to them (Out of Sight, Justified, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty,etc). The remake took all of the charm out of the original and replaced it with graphic violence and cruelty.

beebmam 5y ago

Twitter isn't a nation, nor is Spotify

hansel_der 5y ago
in case you missed it https://hn.algolia.com/?query=A%20Declaration%20of%20the%20Independence%20of%20Cyberspace&type=story&dateRange=all&sort=byDate&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=A%20Declaration%20of%20the%20I...
- TheRealNGenius 5y ago
  I missed that thanks

archhn 5y ago

We live in a post-cultural nation. There cannot be one culture for a nation this diverse. Only the most bland, overly sanitized, vapid, consumerist culture can survive on the national level. Are you a PC or a Mac guy? Do you like Coke or Pepsi? A culture revolving around things because they have nothing to polarizing to say about how we should interpret and live our lives...a post-human wasteland.

dusted 5y ago

The application of censorship itself, not what is being censored, is the main symptom of the declining cultural health. The mentality that there are so universally wrong and right things that the right ones must be forced upon any mind, no matter the context, and the wrong ones must be extinguished no matter the context.

synaesthesisx 5y ago
Censorship is inherently dangerous because it can be weaponized to silence dissenting minorities.
- enriquto 5y ago
  > Censorship is inherently dangerous because it can be weaponized to silence dissenting minorities. It's its main purpose. The word "can" in your sentence is a bit too generous.
suslik 5y ago
Unfortunately, this. Censorship on moral grounds, amplified by a lack of epistemic humility, is a key characteristic of modern western culture. Not only western, and modern, of course - I suspect that the feeling that 'I am more correct than the other' is a natural property of consciousness itself; an understanding of one's own mind is always more intuitive than a theory of mind. Anyways, I feel - and would be great to be wrong here - that there is no technocratic solution to prevent censorship in the context of culture that demands, even begs for it. Splitting facebook, making twitter a utility, developing government-controlled platforms - none of these sound convincing.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  > epistemic humility Doesn't mix with political speech too well since most political cultures punish uncertainty, which is always prevalent in any intellectual discourse. I too believe there is no technical solution for or against censorship. Luckily digital infrastructure is at least robust against censorship because some very wise people could look beyond the horizon. But people asking for content control need to have their education improved. And to a degree they also have to be demasked, because arguing against freedom of expressions in the name of minorities is beyond reasonable.

Animats 5y ago

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” ― W.B. Yeats That was written in 1919 and published in 1920. So the US has been there before. Came back from there, but it took a depression and a world war. We might get both of those soon.

sergiomattei 5y ago
I’m honestly surprised people see this as anything new.
erwincoumans 5y ago
That is disturbing, what makes you think so? Ukraine and Taiwan situations?

dirtyid 5y ago

"he noted that there exists not just a right to speak but a right to hear" Is that so? I don't see why a speaker is entitled to an audience, let alone access to mass private communication.

strawhatguy 5y ago
Where did Frederick Douglas say anyone was entitled to an audience? The speaker has a right to speak, but cannot demand others listen. The listener has a right to hear, but cannot demand others to speak. The speech he gives is amazing to read, he goes further: "Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money."
originalvichy 5y ago
That’s not what he means by right to hear. The government or anyone else barring one from entering a lecture is preventing one’s freedom to hear. It’s pretty obvious that freedom of speech also implies freedom to attend speeches

jacquesm 5y ago

The assumption here is that there ever was a state of cultural health to begin with. I really do not believe that that was ever the case, and if you start out from such a broken premise I really wonder if the decisions you make will move you in the right direction. The bigger question for me is whether or not absolute free speech and true democracy are fundamentally compatible or not and I have not seen proof of that. Either camp is stuck in that it is either a prerequisite or that it is impossible without any movement towards a practical middle.

Jtype 5y ago
That sounds like a pedantic discussion of the meaning of the word "health." What the author is referring to is the cohesion of society. The "health" is the ability for us to get along and reduce the infighting.

0dayz 5y ago

I Wil admit this will come off as "omg nazi" hysteria, however I've always felt that nazis alongside every other fascistic ideology (including bolshevism). With that said, one of the problems I've heard about almost unlimited free speech is the same paradox about tolerating the intolerable, but in this case it's having political entities take advantage of their free speech and knowingly break the law to silence others speech. And in a way I think it's what is happening here (although not always by breaking the law). Even though I support USA free speech I can't argue with that point without doing mental gymnast ics or setting up hopeful premises.

RickJWagner 5y ago

ladyattis 5y ago

I'm going to say that censorship itself has never been a bug in society but rather a feature of how societies organize their ideologies formally and informally. In the case of Fredrick Douglas' speech being censored by a violent mob and the police bowing to the mob in the end are examples of how societies function in this case. I'm not saying censorship is good or bad but imagining the United States is separate from other societies in having a legal norm of free speech doesn't eliminate the social norms (formal and informal) that violate the spirit and law of free speech. And there's not been much effort in the years between the highlighted event and now that has changed this behavior in the United States or elsewhere. More than ever, we're seeing all societies turning to censorship and self-selection to avoid conflict even if said conflict is inevitable and that maybe heated discussions and insults would be kinder than bullets and fists. The real problem here is how do we break the social norms that induce censorship? The law itself isn't sufficient and making a "mandatory free speech" kind of law seems contradictory since the right to speak comes with the implied right to not hear the speaker. So I'm all ears on what everyone here thinks we can do to resolve the matter.

zozbot234 5y ago
> The real problem here is how do we break the social norms that induce censorship? This is what Marcuse invented his "Repressive Tolerance" for. Platform censored, unfashionable ideas everywhere, irrespective of their underlying merits - and strive to deplatform fashionable, censorious ones. The point was not to defend society against anything inherently problematic, contrary to what's sometimes claimed - but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. It's pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name.