5 ms·
Well, in the literal sense it is censorship, being the suppression of materials deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds. A bit lik
by Zikes 11y ago
Well, in the literal sense it is censorship, being the suppression of materials deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds. A bit like a (likely American) TV censor might "bleep" a word they don't want to expose people's delicate sensibilities to.
I mean, that doesn't make it "evil", but a lot of people might say that censorship of any sort is a bit of a grey area. That whole "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" thing.
- brandonmenc 11y ago> "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" When it comes down to it, no one would really do this.
- Zikes 11y agoYou don't think that people would defend to the death one of the basic principles of human rights? To be clear, I'm not saying that Github censoring "retarded" is a human rights issue, but as long as we've gone off the rails let's see where the train comes to a stop.
- brandonmenc 11y ago> You don't think that people would defend to the death one of the basic principles of human rights? A progressive making that claim would never take a bullet so that someone could fly the Confederate flag, for example. It's just not going to happen. They may fight to defend the 1st Amendment, but that's easy because it's a proxy behind which exists all the specific instances of speech they would find horrible along with the speech they hold dear. People making the claim probably mean the latter, but the wording implies something more specific, presumably for effect.
- Zikes 11y agoAh, it looks like the train didn't make it very far, did it.
- brandonmenc 11y agoTo be fair, I agree with your original comment. I'm just nit picking on that particular phrase, independent of what you wrote. I think your use of the phrase is appropriate.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoExcept, of course, people literally have.
- EugeneOZ 11y agoCharlie Hebdo did.
- brandonmenc 11y agoThey did not. Charlie Hebdo did not publish, then get attacked for, content they themselves found offensive.
- EugeneOZ 11y agoNo, they know it's offensive and their fight was exactly about freedom of speech.
- brandonmenc 11y agoYes, they knew it was offensive - to others. There is no indication that it actually offended them. Which, unless it did, it's not the same thing.
- EugeneOZ 11y agoThey are caricaturists, nothing can offend them. You miss the point of their reasoning.
- Zikes 11y agoThat's not entirely fair, either. I'm sure there are plenty of things that would offend them, but they understand that just because something is offensive does not make it wrong.
- brandonmenc 11y ago> nothing can offend them Then they didn't die to protect speech they were offended by. I don't know how much clearer this can be.
- 11y ago
- JungleGymSam 11y agoWhat the...? What the.. what... I ... WHAT? You.. I can't even. What?
- return0 11y agoI disagree with what you said and i ask the moderators to hellban you and delete all your comments Let's see if anyone jumps to defend you...
- mbillie1 11y agoSo if a restaurant asks you to leave because you're shouting ethnic slurs, that's censorship? Come on. GitHub is not the entirety of your expressive domain. If you were disallowed by law from saying "retard" I would be sympathetic to this case. As is this entire thread reads like a series of entitled children whinging that their mums told them not to be nasty at school. If you dislike what GitHub has done, host your repo at one of the other free sites that provide this service, and stop insulting people in legitimately oppressive states by equating your churlish valley bigotry with legitimately repressed speech.
- Zikes 11y agoHey, if you want to argue with the dictionary be my guest. I'm afraid my name isn't Oxford, though, and I'm not really sure how to reach him. Sorry about that.
- mbillie1 11y agoIn that case - since you're merely quoting the dictionary without voicing an opinion - I invite you to refrain from further diluting the present discussion with your vacuous commentary. I assure you that the entirety of HN readership can avail itself of word definition services.
- Zikes 11y agoIf you're going to ask me to put away the dictionary you could try it without dragging out the thesaurus.
- mbillie1 11y agoAnother profound contribution to the discourse! Are you always so topical, or are you making a special effort here?
- waterlesscloud 11y agoApparently not. This. Is. Censorship. It's not in any way a debatable point. The dynamic that's going on here is that people want to endorse censorship while avoiding using that word.
- realusername 11y agoI never really understood this part of the american culture. I'm not american and to me they are just words, censoring offensive words with beeps on TV is really an american/british thing, it's really strange to me.