5 ms·

Why wouldn’t they? Nominal proponents of open society in the West were all too happy to engage in censorship during an emergency rather than stand by their pri

Why wouldn’t they? Nominal proponents of open society in the West were all too happy to engage in censorship during an emergency rather than stand by their principles. What would motivate people to embrace an open society if the nominal proponents don’t?

cyberlurker 4y ago
Which emergency are you referring to? And what censorship methods are you referring to? For example, I think the media choosing not to cover a story immediately when it is being peddled by an unreliable political agent doesn’t qualify as censorship. Even if it turns out to be true.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  >The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. >Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
  - soco 4y ago
    Or maybe because the large public doesn't care reading about some things, thus the press will not write about it. That's capitalism at work and the freedom of the press. There's no law forcing us to read everything, luckily, and just because a few people consider something of interest doesn't automatically make it of interest.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      It takes a special type of hubris to read Orwell on censorship and say you know better.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  COVID was the example I had I mind, where they censored medical professionals, politicians, and journalists who said lockdowns were a bad idea, questioned the data supporting mRNA (eg, Robert Malone), etc. But since you mentioned not covering a story — we also have the Hunter Biden laptop, which wasn’t merely not covered, but actively censored on social media during an election. (Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg admitted as much.) The whole point of freedom of speech is the censors are notoriously bad at deciding what is “misinformation”, as they were in that case… where they shut down a political story which hurt their preferred candidate but was nonetheless true.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    Social media != the government
    - yourusername 4y ago
      Social media censors partly because of pressure from governments that make it clear that regulation will be coming if they don't do it "voluntarily".
      - jliptzin 4y ago
        Examples of such pressure from the government? Do you mean when Trump threatened to remove section 230 protection from social media companies because he didn't like "the way he was treated" on their sites? https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/916096008/justice-department-proposes-weakening-social-medias-legal-shield https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/916096008/justice-department-...
        clarkmoody 4y ago
        FB censored the Hunter laptop story during the election at the behest of the FBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ
        4y ago
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
> Nominal proponents Could you be slightly more specific?
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Governments which claim to support values like freedom of speech, but in fact do not. Eg, the US — who is outspoken on that issue, but during an emergency used social media companies to censor doctors, politicians, etc who did not agree with them.
  - cyberlurker 4y ago
    They passed laws making those social media companies censor them?
    - ssizn 4y ago
      They didn’t have to.
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      They had officials coordinate with social media companies to coordinate takedowns of accounts and messages which disagreed with them.
      - cyberlurker 4y ago
        So, public health officials asked social media companies to stop accounts from spamming that vaccines cause autism? There was no law and no threat, just public and private coordination. I have no problem with that. Sorry, this is not even close to censorship.
        ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
        If a member of the government asks their friend in a social media company to quietly take down a post, they are using influence and corruption (of the company) to impose government censorship. If they ask the legal representatives of the company to make a policy decision to take down a post, there is the implied threat of regulation, and it is government coersion. Both are legally violations of the first amendment.
dale_glass 4y ago
I think pretty much nobody stands by their principles. Because ultimately principles are a means to an end, and if the end is not achieved, they're discarded. And this really makes perfect sense to me when you think of it. We're not logical robots. If whatever principles we hold backfire badly enough, we'll discard them or add exceptions because the reason for those principles is that we believe they make a better world. If the world is not made better, then the principles failed in their aim. Morality needs a degree of flexibility to survive, or somebody will exploit it.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Except that, in this case, discarding them led to a worse world: - bitter divisions in the nation because they subverted the consensus mechanism - poor policy decisions because we didn’t have a robust debate about options - poor medical outcomes because we didn’t exercise due caution The reason we had those principles in the first place was to avoid repeats of past bad outcomes from not having them — and they were discarded at a societal level for shortsighted reasons. Your job as a leader is to uphold those principles in hard times because they’re the path to a better outcome. And our leaders badly failed us.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    Actually I'm not sure what you're talking about. Give specific examples of those things?
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  I guess it depends on what you define as a principle. You are in a manner correct, but saying that "nobody stands by their principles" is not nuanced enough. I personally would broaden the definition that a principle depends on the context, and in the simplest sense a principle has to work in your favor in the long run. For example honestly is generally a good policy, but not if you are a Jew trying to hide your ethnicity in Nazi Germany.
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
Its not even random people you don't see - its us. Us, in HN, the people you are talking to now - we would rather have censorship than free speech. You get the government you deserve. The article yesterday "Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end" shows exactly what the majority of people here think.
- swayvil 4y ago
  In short, the vast majority prefer "right speech" over "free speech". The vast majority prefer many things that are relatively low-quality, stupid, etc.

cyberlurker 4y ago

Which emergency are you referring to? And what censorship methods are you referring to? For example, I think the media choosing not to cover a story immediately when it is being peddled by an unreliable political agent doesn’t qualify as censorship. Even if it turns out to be true.

thrown_22 4y ago
>The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. >Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
- soco 4y ago
  Or maybe because the large public doesn't care reading about some things, thus the press will not write about it. That's capitalism at work and the freedom of the press. There's no law forcing us to read everything, luckily, and just because a few people consider something of interest doesn't automatically make it of interest.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    It takes a special type of hubris to read Orwell on censorship and say you know better.
zmgsabst 4y ago
COVID was the example I had I mind, where they censored medical professionals, politicians, and journalists who said lockdowns were a bad idea, questioned the data supporting mRNA (eg, Robert Malone), etc. But since you mentioned not covering a story — we also have the Hunter Biden laptop, which wasn’t merely not covered, but actively censored on social media during an election. (Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg admitted as much.) The whole point of freedom of speech is the censors are notoriously bad at deciding what is “misinformation”, as they were in that case… where they shut down a political story which hurt their preferred candidate but was nonetheless true.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  Social media != the government
  - yourusername 4y ago
    Social media censors partly because of pressure from governments that make it clear that regulation will be coming if they don't do it "voluntarily".
    - jliptzin 4y ago
      Examples of such pressure from the government? Do you mean when Trump threatened to remove section 230 protection from social media companies because he didn't like "the way he was treated" on their sites? https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/916096008/justice-department-proposes-weakening-social-medias-legal-shield https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/916096008/justice-department-...
      - clarkmoody 4y ago
        FB censored the Hunter laptop story during the election at the behest of the FBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ
        4y ago

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

> Nominal proponents Could you be slightly more specific?

zmgsabst 4y ago
Governments which claim to support values like freedom of speech, but in fact do not. Eg, the US — who is outspoken on that issue, but during an emergency used social media companies to censor doctors, politicians, etc who did not agree with them.
- cyberlurker 4y ago
  They passed laws making those social media companies censor them?
  - ssizn 4y ago
    They didn’t have to.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    They had officials coordinate with social media companies to coordinate takedowns of accounts and messages which disagreed with them.
    - cyberlurker 4y ago
      So, public health officials asked social media companies to stop accounts from spamming that vaccines cause autism? There was no law and no threat, just public and private coordination. I have no problem with that. Sorry, this is not even close to censorship.
      - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
        If a member of the government asks their friend in a social media company to quietly take down a post, they are using influence and corruption (of the company) to impose government censorship. If they ask the legal representatives of the company to make a policy decision to take down a post, there is the implied threat of regulation, and it is government coersion. Both are legally violations of the first amendment.

dale_glass 4y ago

I think pretty much nobody stands by their principles. Because ultimately principles are a means to an end, and if the end is not achieved, they're discarded. And this really makes perfect sense to me when you think of it. We're not logical robots. If whatever principles we hold backfire badly enough, we'll discard them or add exceptions because the reason for those principles is that we believe they make a better world. If the world is not made better, then the principles failed in their aim. Morality needs a degree of flexibility to survive, or somebody will exploit it.

zmgsabst 4y ago
Except that, in this case, discarding them led to a worse world: - bitter divisions in the nation because they subverted the consensus mechanism - poor policy decisions because we didn’t have a robust debate about options - poor medical outcomes because we didn’t exercise due caution The reason we had those principles in the first place was to avoid repeats of past bad outcomes from not having them — and they were discarded at a societal level for shortsighted reasons. Your job as a leader is to uphold those principles in hard times because they’re the path to a better outcome. And our leaders badly failed us.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Actually I'm not sure what you're talking about. Give specific examples of those things?
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
I guess it depends on what you define as a principle. You are in a manner correct, but saying that "nobody stands by their principles" is not nuanced enough. I personally would broaden the definition that a principle depends on the context, and in the simplest sense a principle has to work in your favor in the long run. For example honestly is generally a good policy, but not if you are a Jew trying to hide your ethnicity in Nazi Germany.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

Its not even random people you don't see - its us. Us, in HN, the people you are talking to now - we would rather have censorship than free speech. You get the government you deserve. The article yesterday "Backsliding on free expression around the world needs to end" shows exactly what the majority of people here think.

swayvil 4y ago
In short, the vast majority prefer "right speech" over "free speech". The vast majority prefer many things that are relatively low-quality, stupid, etc.