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A lot of people like to focus very exclusive on the aspect if its top-down, with the implied message being that censorship is acceptable as long its done by com
by belorn 2y ago
A lot of people like to focus very exclusive on the aspect if its top-down, with the implied message being that censorship is acceptable as long its done by companies or community leaders rather than government. Yes, it is worse when it is done by governments. But no, it doesn't make censorship acceptable. So much debate happens because some people view all censorship as bad, that is rules intended to inhibit speech and shutdown wrong-thinking, while others want to distinguish between government censorship and "good" censorship. As someone who stand in the "all censorship as bad" category, there is no good censorship! Only grades of wrong.
Different wrongness do get compare. That doesn't make very very very wrong to be equivalent to just very wrong. Both are however wrong. The kind of censorship and self-censorship we have seen in science, popular media and even humor in the last few decades has been insane compared to the decades previous. To throw in a random example, someone who criticized religion was murdered a few days ago in Sweden, and as a society we kind just expected it and waiting for it to happen. Something like Monty Python could not exist today as they would had either been censored or murdered, and so they would have been forced to self-censor long before their skills as comedians would have grown.
Censorship is not something we can pick and choose from.
- philipov 2y agoThen you agree that what's going on now is wrong, and there's no need to bring up lesser wrongs to distract us from that.
- belorn 2y ago> Then you agree that what's going on now is wrong Obviously yes. Censorship is not something we can pick and choose from. > and there's no need to bring up lesser wrongs to distract us from that. There would not be a need for that if people agreed that censorship is wrong. As long people see some censorship as good, rather than a lesser wrongs, the trend of ever more censorship will just continue and this kind of events will continue to occur and at larger scope. Censorship is a kind of political violence that once accepted only expands until the social rules totally breaks apart. It can't exit as just a rule for the government, it must be something that people inherently support as a concept.
- burkaman 2y agoVoluntarily choosing not to say something is preference, not self-censorship. For example, some people choose not to swear because they don't like swears. That is just a preference, self-censorship is when you want to swear but don't because of external pressure. Nobody was forced to stop using master/slave, some companies just chose not to because that was their preference. They didn't want to use the word slave anymore. It's reasonable to call it pointless or performative, but I don't think any of the decision-makers at these companies were forced into it. Most companies did not change anything, and they faced absolutely no consequences. I'm sure there were some (for example) GitHub employees who didn't agree with the decision and maybe felt censored, but basically every company on the planet has standards for language in the workplace, so in that sense every company is guilty of censorship. GitHub did not force any of its users to do anything, you could still use whatever language you want, and you can search "slave" right now to see how common it still is.
- Dylan16807 2y ago> GitHub Let's not mix up issues though. Removing 'master' in git has much less justification than removing master/slave terminology.
- orf 2y agoNobody removed “master” from git though
- Dylan16807 2y agohttps://github.com/github/renaming https://github.com/github/renaming https://www.theserverside.com/feature/Why-GitHub-renamed-its-master-branch-to-main https://www.theserverside.com/feature/Why-GitHub-renamed-its... They did stuff. Plenty qualifies as "removing". (And I didn't say they reached out and changed the entire world.) And unlike master/slave, it's fake inclusivity.
- orf 2y agoCool story, nobody removed “master” from git though