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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Ok, so I'm going to do one that's actually likely to be downvoted by the Americans here.
Sometimes censorship is necessary for a safer society.
This is an actually good one, speaking as an American. I disagree with you, and that makes this a good answer to the question posed in this thread. I disagree with you because to understand why America can't have nice things, you need to imagine what it would look like if the Republicans were in charge of implementing them (because they basically are, and have been more or less unchallenged since Reagan). So, no, I'm not in favor of censorship, because what we'd get is censorship a la Republican, where you're free to use the N-word, but criticizing the government, CEOs, Wall Street, or Jesus will get you sent straight to jail.
Censorship of what exactly? Certain things I’d understand, but there are alot of things that could be censored that wouldn’t be so great
Hate speech is a good start. Go about the place saying "Muslims rape children" or "F-slurs make us lose wars" and you are actively making life more dangerous for people.
Problem is that well-intentioned rules with discretionary boundaries end up with unethical enforcement. See: the bill a few months ago that federally defines "anti-semitism" as including "criticism of the state of Israel". Actually that's not even a discretionary boundary, that's statutory. The reasoning behind the First Amendment in the first place was to avoid authoritarian censorship, including these kinds of games where "reasonable regulation" of speech is used to shoehorn in authoritarian censorship.
Hate speech is not protected by the constitution and is typically a point of proof in hate crime cases. There are also civil remedies for directed hate speech in many states. Also assault is a crime that only involves words.
We allow generalized hate speech because we believe that the appropriate counter to speech is speech.
“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” - Justice Louis D. Brandeis
That is 100% false. Hate speech is absolutely protected speech. The only speech that is subject to criminal penalties is speech that incites people to immediate violence, and obscenity (e.g., child pornography). I'm not going to cite all the case law, but this is a good starting point
In the world of corporate mass media where money is a microphone, unfortunately this belief is just idealist faith. Overall, good ideas and speech alone hasn't prevailed, and harmful speech has done more than counter-speech could hope to fix.
Then who should be the one deciding what gets censored and how?
Good question. It's especially a tough one in the real world, where the people who have the power to censor are typically the ones who shouldn't have it.
I personally don't think there are any hard-and-fast definitions of what should be censored and what shouldn't. It depends heavily on content and context. There's a big difference between, hypothetically, a historian discussing Nazi ideology in a research paper, and between a politician discussing it in the presidential debate. One of those has legitimate value to society, the other is anti-social, politically delusional and harmful to citizens. Same with some forms of climate denialism - there is a valid point in permitting counterviews to consensus in the scientific method, but there is also a point where mass media is outright lying for the sake of self-enrichment at the expense of the entire planet's population.
One aspect of this is that communities often decide, to some degree, what is acceptable to say through social mores. This obviously isn't foolproof and can be manipulated, but tends to be better than having just one person at the head of a network deciding.
It is a tough question, because everyone has biases. You shouldn't have any one person or group in control of this.
That all said, my comment was meant more meant as a critique of the environment, where the owning class (that is, the ruling class) own and control the vast majority of the mass media and social media platforms. The worldview I've seen around which suggests their speech is comparable to the speech of you and me is naive. That's a big part of why nonsense is now common sense, because the ruling class and their propaganda can pervade society despite so much of it being either illogical misinformation or outright bullshit.
Strong disagree, but, you know, this is about things Americans aren't ready to hear.
with a country that decides modern online privacy laws based off of 1980s video rentals, any sort of restriction on free speech WILL be manipulated into whatever the people in power agrees with.
We had a decades long problem with Muslim grooming gangs in the UK and this kind of attitude was what prevented the authorities from intervening for so long. In some cases actively covering up the existence of the gangs or casting aspersions on the victims. Estimates of the number of victims are in the hundreds, possibly thousands.
Every day we get another horrifying new detail about historical abuse and in some places these gangs are still active.
"Muslims rape kids" is wrong, bigoted, and a gross generalisation. However if there is a pattern of certain abuser profiles then the general public needs to be informed.
Yes. That's why it's an example being used. It's not how you inform the general public of real atrocities, and the important kernels of truth behind that wrong, bigoted and gross generalisation don't justify making it. So I don't understand why you felt compelled to detail them.
(https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2025/01/02/british-journalist-could-face-years-in-prison-for-refusing-to-hand-over-his-passwords-to-the-police/7822432/) This is why you're wrong
It's weird how America is pretty divided on this. Like we believe in consequences?
So you can absolutely yell Fire in a movie theater and get a lawsuit. Or you can scream "Bomb" in an airport and get tackled.
Yet on the phone, some lady said "Delay, deny, depose" and suddenly, she's a terrorist.
We "believe" you should have the power to say anything.
Yet that's a lie and Americans still believe in it.
You should delete your comment if you truly believe in it.
Huh?