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Curiously, all the people that support such censorship in western countries are actually against it in this instance. Almost like whether or not they choose to

Curiously, all the people that support such censorship in western countries are actually against it in this instance. Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to.

barbazoo 4y ago
I hope you actually went and asked everybody.
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  Starting with you, do you support social media censorship in the United States? And do you support social media censorship by turkey? Those are yes or no questions.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    If he considered himself a counter-example to your claims, he probably would have said so upfront.
  - ars 4y ago
    No and no. I don't support any censorship at all for any topics even those that deeply offend me. The only exception would be actual death threats and things that are illegal to do.
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      This is tautological. Death threats are illegal speech because we decided to make it illegal speech. Something we could do for other types of speech.
  - guelo 4y ago
    Do you support Elon's censorship of antifa accounts?
    - alphanullmeric 4y ago
      Difference between me stopping you from wearing shoes in my house, and me stopping you from wearing shoes in yours.
      - d110af5ccf 4y ago
        Not really, no. All three cases (US Gov, Turkish Gov, Elon) are censorship of the public square in the end. I'm against all of them. As far as I'm concerned the US constitutional standard for free speech should apply to any platform above a certain size in terms of daily active users that facilitates communication between those users.
        alphanullmeric 4y ago
        So to you, there’s no difference in preventing me from wearing shoes in your house and making it illegal for anyone to wear shoes in their houses?
- ycombinete 4y ago
  yes, I found that claim bizarre as well. How does one even form such an opinion about "everyone" who holds x opinion?
pmichaud 4y ago
I have seen the same thing, but I think the cause is more that maybe the overwhelming majority of people can’t meaningfully do abstraction? Like they blow a gasket between conceiving of individual actions and beliefs vs policies related to actions and beliefs? So people like this will say sentences like “censorship is wrong” but implicit in the sentence for them is “censorship of correct and/or my information is wrong” because the sentence in their mind must be concretely about something like “correct information”. There’s no way for them to easily think the thought “censorship is wrong in the abstract.” This also feels related to being able to use “veil of ignorance” type reasoning. I don’t think they know how to imagine being not only a different person, but an unknown person. I also don’t think they know how to imagine being wrong in some sense, not in the epistemic humility sense (although, yes, that too, much of the time), but in the “suppose I’m just deeply confused about everything, how would I want to be treated? How might I recover?” I think all these are bottlenecked on a mental abstraction ceiling, and I think all these things work together to contribute to the effects you noted.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  The way American public schools (and I presume other schools) teach kids about censorship and propaganda probably has something to do with it. It's not "propaganda" unless it's telling lies. And it's not "censorship" when it seems justified. Propaganda is taught to be synonymous with the promulgation of falsehoods, but in reality propaganda will tell the truth whenever the truth is convenient to the propagandist. To a propagandist, truth and fiction are simply tools to be used whenever either helps the propagandist accomplish their objective.
- oivey 4y ago
  I agree, probably almost no one truly believes censorship is wrong in the abstract. Similarly, very few people believe in absolute freedom. I’m not sure there are really any belief systems where those two things can be really consistent. There is a real issue with people wrap themselves up as absolutist ideologues while spouting “illegal for thee, but not for me.”
michaelt 4y ago
> Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to. Well, or they have a more nuanced view than "censorship no" or "censorship yes" For example, I support laws preventing stores from selling 3 watt LED bulbs in packages claiming they're 5 watt LED bulbs; or selling generic LED bulbs in packages claiming they're Phillips bulbs. Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech. Must I support all censorship, because I support this one bit of censorship?
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Exactly this. Censorship should be a nuanced topic if anyone gives it any serious thought. Not all censorship is at the same level, and there is obviously a difference between shutting down Twitter and not letting folks criticize the government and, say, not telling folks misinformation that can lead to another's harm or death (fake cures, for example).
  - AeroNotix 4y ago
    The problem with allowing the interpretation of whether something should be censored be based on the obvious nuances that it entails is that the exact nuance is not universal among all people. This is why ZERO censorship is the only reasonable form of censorship.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      I have trouble grasping the extend to which you appreciate the degree of thinking done by other parties for your own benefit. It is the case that unless you are a polymath with copious amount of time and money, you will never be able to accumulate sufficient information to make fully educated decisions in a world truly devoid of censorship. By fully educated I mean starting from the bottom up and going all the way through to reach a conclusion. This means that every single resource you will use has to be verified, all experiments need to be conducted and evaluated. If we don’t censor anything, then there is no point in books because editors are censoring information there. What’s the point of journals and publications without a review process to filter out the garbage? You could very well be a reasonable person, but without censorship to varying degrees your capacity filter garbage is hindered by simply not knowing anything to a reasonable degree of certainty exactly because no form of censorship exists. Thus your capacity to limit information based on prior knowledge is hindered as there is not an authority of any kind that you may trust exactly because there is no way to measure quality of one’s speech outside the scrutiny it passes through through established channels and authorities that already have a reputation and we may trust. The reason we do censorship is because not all speech is benevolent, useful, or true. People will abuse the absence of censorship to attack “unwanted” people, to push lies, to misrepresent information, and to push an agenda instead of letting facts do the talking. Why is it difficult for facts to do the talking? > Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."[1][2] Now, the more bullshit that floats the more bullshit propagates and thus the less true information exists, eventually suffocating us in information garbage. If you wish to see this in action, look into antivax groups convinced that vaccinated individuals will start dropping like flies within the next $LATEST_GOALPOST. Or, take a look at how long it took me to explain why absolute absence of censorship simply does not work just from a view of having a consistent world model and having nobody to trust and no way of doing so. One could extend my comment to include damage done to people or entities intentionally or otherwise. Notice how Musk pivoted out of absolute free speech when advertisers left?
archagon 4y ago
Government censorship (and arrests!!) are in no way comparable to the “censorship” happening in western countries. (Namely, ToC violators getting banned, and government figures suggesting misinformation to look into.) The comparison is just obnoxious.
- junofan 4y ago
  It’s not. Traditionally the government is in charge of the public square. If a private company is enforcing TOS violations while operating a public square, and operating a public square is traditionally a government function, it’s valid to argue violators are entitled to free speech protections.
epgui 4y ago
It's almost like the goal is not censorship for censorship's sake, but rather the goal is actually protecting the more vulnerable (which in this case is clearly the Turkish people and not Erdogan). It's almost like there are principles at play!
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  My principle is that force is only justified in response to force, and speech is not force (unless it makes a threat), false or not. If you don’t agree with that principle then I’d like to hear it explicitly.
  - epgui 4y ago
    I don't agree that speech is not a force unless it makes a threat. Think about what makes you consider "threatening speech" a "force": presumably it has nothing to do with particle physics... is it perhaps that the act of speech itself causes people to adopt behaviours they wouldn't normally adopt? ie.: that it can carry some coercive weight? That it can be used to exploit/endanger vulnerable people in some circumstances? Speech may be a very very weak force in most (or even "nearly all", just for the sake of argument) circumstances, but there are tons of examples of speech being a powerful force, causing large social and historical shifts. There are both positive and negative examples of this.
    - alphanullmeric 4y ago
      I don’t consider threatening speech a force, I’m opposed to it because it threatens force. You can argue that’s an exception to my principle but it’s not far out of line. I don’t try to ban other forms of speech, however much they hurt your feelings, because they don’t threaten force.
      - epgui 4y ago
        Hurting feelings is unfortunate, but generally not considered to be a reason to suppress other people's speech: we rather choose to suppress our own speech when we think it might hurt other people, and choose to do so freely. Almost all "contemporary reasonable censorship in functioning liberal democracies" are attempts to prevent people from exploiting the vulnerability of others: speech that causes people to make *patently insane and irrational* medical decisions, for example. Really stupid things like fake cancer cures, and suggestions to drink bleach. And typically, for proponents of censorship, there is a whole spectrum of acceptability as well: the more it's a grey zone, the less the censorship is acceptable. When the censorship clearly and obviously only constrains the actions of malicious actors, and clearly and obviously protects vulnerable people, it's seen as a win. This is always highly contextual, and limited by the extent of scientific knowledge. A common theme is that censorship to protect those in power (the government) is bad, and censorship to protect those who have the least amount of power is... well, not great (it's definitely always better if it's not needed), but not bad in the same way.
ajmurmann 4y ago
IMO the issue in the entire discussion of "censorship" shouldn't be between censorship vs no censorship but about the outrage amplifiers social media has become. It makes the already huge problem with Bandolini's Law / "flooding the zone with shit" so much bigger by amplifying random voices that drive engagement which is most effectively driven by outrage. I'd wager that addressing this issue will suddenly reduce the number of discussions about "censorship"

barbazoo 4y ago

I hope you actually went and asked everybody.

alphanullmeric 4y ago
Starting with you, do you support social media censorship in the United States? And do you support social media censorship by turkey? Those are yes or no questions.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  If he considered himself a counter-example to your claims, he probably would have said so upfront.
- ars 4y ago
  No and no. I don't support any censorship at all for any topics even those that deeply offend me. The only exception would be actual death threats and things that are illegal to do.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    This is tautological. Death threats are illegal speech because we decided to make it illegal speech. Something we could do for other types of speech.
- guelo 4y ago
  Do you support Elon's censorship of antifa accounts?
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    Difference between me stopping you from wearing shoes in my house, and me stopping you from wearing shoes in yours.
    - d110af5ccf 4y ago
      Not really, no. All three cases (US Gov, Turkish Gov, Elon) are censorship of the public square in the end. I'm against all of them. As far as I'm concerned the US constitutional standard for free speech should apply to any platform above a certain size in terms of daily active users that facilitates communication between those users.
      - alphanullmeric 4y ago
        So to you, there’s no difference in preventing me from wearing shoes in your house and making it illegal for anyone to wear shoes in their houses?
ycombinete 4y ago
yes, I found that claim bizarre as well. How does one even form such an opinion about "everyone" who holds x opinion?

pmichaud 4y ago

I have seen the same thing, but I think the cause is more that maybe the overwhelming majority of people can’t meaningfully do abstraction? Like they blow a gasket between conceiving of individual actions and beliefs vs policies related to actions and beliefs? So people like this will say sentences like “censorship is wrong” but implicit in the sentence for them is “censorship of correct and/or my information is wrong” because the sentence in their mind must be concretely about something like “correct information”. There’s no way for them to easily think the thought “censorship is wrong in the abstract.” This also feels related to being able to use “veil of ignorance” type reasoning. I don’t think they know how to imagine being not only a different person, but an unknown person. I also don’t think they know how to imagine being wrong in some sense, not in the epistemic humility sense (although, yes, that too, much of the time), but in the “suppose I’m just deeply confused about everything, how would I want to be treated? How might I recover?” I think all these are bottlenecked on a mental abstraction ceiling, and I think all these things work together to contribute to the effects you noted.

LarryMullins 4y ago
The way American public schools (and I presume other schools) teach kids about censorship and propaganda probably has something to do with it. It's not "propaganda" unless it's telling lies. And it's not "censorship" when it seems justified. Propaganda is taught to be synonymous with the promulgation of falsehoods, but in reality propaganda will tell the truth whenever the truth is convenient to the propagandist. To a propagandist, truth and fiction are simply tools to be used whenever either helps the propagandist accomplish their objective.
oivey 4y ago
I agree, probably almost no one truly believes censorship is wrong in the abstract. Similarly, very few people believe in absolute freedom. I’m not sure there are really any belief systems where those two things can be really consistent. There is a real issue with people wrap themselves up as absolutist ideologues while spouting “illegal for thee, but not for me.”

michaelt 4y ago

> Almost like whether or not they choose to support a policy depends not on what it does but instead on who it’s being done to. Well, or they have a more nuanced view than "censorship no" or "censorship yes" For example, I support laws preventing stores from selling 3 watt LED bulbs in packages claiming they're 5 watt LED bulbs; or selling generic LED bulbs in packages claiming they're Phillips bulbs. Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech. Must I support all censorship, because I support this one bit of censorship?

Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Exactly this. Censorship should be a nuanced topic if anyone gives it any serious thought. Not all censorship is at the same level, and there is obviously a difference between shutting down Twitter and not letting folks criticize the government and, say, not telling folks misinformation that can lead to another's harm or death (fake cures, for example).
- AeroNotix 4y ago
  The problem with allowing the interpretation of whether something should be censored be based on the obvious nuances that it entails is that the exact nuance is not universal among all people. This is why ZERO censorship is the only reasonable form of censorship.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    I have trouble grasping the extend to which you appreciate the degree of thinking done by other parties for your own benefit. It is the case that unless you are a polymath with copious amount of time and money, you will never be able to accumulate sufficient information to make fully educated decisions in a world truly devoid of censorship. By fully educated I mean starting from the bottom up and going all the way through to reach a conclusion. This means that every single resource you will use has to be verified, all experiments need to be conducted and evaluated. If we don’t censor anything, then there is no point in books because editors are censoring information there. What’s the point of journals and publications without a review process to filter out the garbage? You could very well be a reasonable person, but without censorship to varying degrees your capacity filter garbage is hindered by simply not knowing anything to a reasonable degree of certainty exactly because no form of censorship exists. Thus your capacity to limit information based on prior knowledge is hindered as there is not an authority of any kind that you may trust exactly because there is no way to measure quality of one’s speech outside the scrutiny it passes through through established channels and authorities that already have a reputation and we may trust. The reason we do censorship is because not all speech is benevolent, useful, or true. People will abuse the absence of censorship to attack “unwanted” people, to push lies, to misrepresent information, and to push an agenda instead of letting facts do the talking. Why is it difficult for facts to do the talking? > Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."[1][2] Now, the more bullshit that floats the more bullshit propagates and thus the less true information exists, eventually suffocating us in information garbage. If you wish to see this in action, look into antivax groups convinced that vaccinated individuals will start dropping like flies within the next $LATEST_GOALPOST. Or, take a look at how long it took me to explain why absolute absence of censorship simply does not work just from a view of having a consistent world model and having nobody to trust and no way of doing so. One could extend my comment to include damage done to people or entities intentionally or otherwise. Notice how Musk pivoted out of absolute free speech when advertisers left?

archagon 4y ago

Government censorship (and arrests!!) are in no way comparable to the “censorship” happening in western countries. (Namely, ToC violators getting banned, and government figures suggesting misinformation to look into.) The comparison is just obnoxious.

junofan 4y ago
It’s not. Traditionally the government is in charge of the public square. If a private company is enforcing TOS violations while operating a public square, and operating a public square is traditionally a government function, it’s valid to argue violators are entitled to free speech protections.

epgui 4y ago

It's almost like the goal is not censorship for censorship's sake, but rather the goal is actually protecting the more vulnerable (which in this case is clearly the Turkish people and not Erdogan). It's almost like there are principles at play!

alphanullmeric 4y ago
My principle is that force is only justified in response to force, and speech is not force (unless it makes a threat), false or not. If you don’t agree with that principle then I’d like to hear it explicitly.
- epgui 4y ago
  I don't agree that speech is not a force unless it makes a threat. Think about what makes you consider "threatening speech" a "force": presumably it has nothing to do with particle physics... is it perhaps that the act of speech itself causes people to adopt behaviours they wouldn't normally adopt? ie.: that it can carry some coercive weight? That it can be used to exploit/endanger vulnerable people in some circumstances? Speech may be a very very weak force in most (or even "nearly all", just for the sake of argument) circumstances, but there are tons of examples of speech being a powerful force, causing large social and historical shifts. There are both positive and negative examples of this.
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    I don’t consider threatening speech a force, I’m opposed to it because it threatens force. You can argue that’s an exception to my principle but it’s not far out of line. I don’t try to ban other forms of speech, however much they hurt your feelings, because they don’t threaten force.
    - epgui 4y ago
      Hurting feelings is unfortunate, but generally not considered to be a reason to suppress other people's speech: we rather choose to suppress our own speech when we think it might hurt other people, and choose to do so freely. Almost all "contemporary reasonable censorship in functioning liberal democracies" are attempts to prevent people from exploiting the vulnerability of others: speech that causes people to make *patently insane and irrational* medical decisions, for example. Really stupid things like fake cancer cures, and suggestions to drink bleach. And typically, for proponents of censorship, there is a whole spectrum of acceptability as well: the more it's a grey zone, the less the censorship is acceptable. When the censorship clearly and obviously only constrains the actions of malicious actors, and clearly and obviously protects vulnerable people, it's seen as a win. This is always highly contextual, and limited by the extent of scientific knowledge. A common theme is that censorship to protect those in power (the government) is bad, and censorship to protect those who have the least amount of power is... well, not great (it's definitely always better if it's not needed), but not bad in the same way.

ajmurmann 4y ago

IMO the issue in the entire discussion of "censorship" shouldn't be between censorship vs no censorship but about the outrage amplifiers social media has become. It makes the already huge problem with Bandolini's Law / "flooding the zone with shit" so much bigger by amplifying random voices that drive engagement which is most effectively driven by outrage. I'd wager that addressing this issue will suddenly reduce the number of discussions about "censorship"