“Censorship” can mean anything from the government imprisoning you because you criticized it, to having somebody removed from your restaurant because they’re yelling the N word in the faces of your customers.
Without being more specific you might as well ask if swimming is always wrong, or if hitting somebody is always wrong. Yes, hitting someone sounds like a scary wrong thing, but on the other hand there’s boxing matches. Swimming is wrong if you’re trespassing in someone’s pool.
“What’s better: a cat or a dog?”
“Easy, cats. They are the superior melee weapon.”
Clearly misinformation. Reported
Everybody else in this thread seems to be clear on the meaning. But for you, here. By censorship I mean removing what you said from the conversation. Removing posts and replies.
No everybody is very clearly not clear on the meaning as they are hardly the first person that’s needed you to clarify things.
I understand you’re having trouble communicating your points, and yeah maybe folks should be more patient with you, but don’t start talking to somebody like they’re an idiot because you’re failing to get your point across. You’re speaking so broadly and ignoring any request to give more context or specificity. If you want people to answer you, you need to think through what you want to say and be more thorough.
No really, we’re good.
What is with these vague, open-ended questions with no effort put in to try to provide any detail or literally anything to engage with?
Now instead of answering your question I have to ask a bunch of questions myself:
- How, exactly, are they wrong?
- Are they merely incorrect?
- Are they actively spreading disinformation?
- Is their speech causing harm? If so what kind?
- Is it direct and measurable like hate-speech or incitements to violence?
- Or is it something vague and nebulous like ‘decadence’ or ‘societal harm’?
- Who decided that they are wrong?
- Experts?
- Moderation teams?
- Bureaucrats?
- And most importantly, who is doing the censoring?
- In what form?
- With what authority?
- In what medium?
- For what purpose (actual, not stated)?
Context matters, friend. Please provide some.
deleted by creator
No matter what authority, rationale or interpretation cited, it comes to the judgment of the person actually pulling the trigger.
But this is obvious.
LOL, banned after only a day, huh?
- How, exactly, are they wrong?
No. People often disagree on what is right and wrong. Then the stronger part will just censor the weaker part regardless of who is wrong.
Asuming a Lemmy where censorship is impossible, how would you handle illegal conversations?
That’s not being right or wrong. That’s “as an instance admin/community mod I don’t want the feds knocking on my door” (as a resident of eagle land. Pick your LEO of choice elsewhere).
Yeah, but that doesn’t answer the question.
The best way to stop censorship is to make it impossible. So, if censorship is impossible, how would you handle illegal conversations?
Dude I legitimately can’t follow what you’re trying to say or accomplish here. You’re not giving us any context and now you’re putting forth some argument as if it’s been the point the whole time, but it’s the first you’ve made it. Can you just explain what you’re on about? Clearly you’re trying to litigate something that happened.
Refer to the replies of others here who are having less difficulty than you. Use the power of Lemmy.
Now I’m starting to think you’re just being a troll
Don’t understand >> troll.
That’s efficient
If it’s impossible to censor people, you would hardly have a strong prosecution arguing you should have done something impossible.
That’s a good point.
Prosecution might then assert that it was your responsibility to employ a system that DID allow for censorship. But I hate that one.
Another option would be to refer the offender to the LEOs. Just shift responsibility. Heck, it could be said that you’re doing the LEOs a service. I like that one.
We don’t call cops in this house
You got a better one?
Well now we are - discussing a much more specific scenario and not just any scenario where someone is seen as wrong by someone else as in the original question.
Anyway, the owner of any private publishing platform must be allowed to choose what they publish or rules for publishing. If it is “censorship” that publishers cannot be forced by any and all to publish illegal content then yeah, that form of “censorship” is entirely justifiable.
Yeah, but once the power is there it will be used for less legit reasons, like removing “saying nice stuff about the wrong politician”.
I’d call that crossing the line.
Censoring this may not be the same as censoring that. We might all be fine with censoring this, but censoring that is crossing the line. It doesn’t mean that the first scenario is wrong just because the second is.
“Wrong” can mean so many things.
Removing misinformation isn’t censorship, for example. Similar with removing off-topic threads or comments.
Removing illegal content is censorship if the law is unjust (eg. political dissent restrictions) but not if the law is just (eg. CSAM removal).
Removing immoral content is way dicier, because morality is not fully mapped, and what one person thinks is immoral might seem perfectly moral to another (eg. blasphemy or profane language). I personally would not removed content I found immoral unless it violated community standards, and would consider such removals an overreach but not censorship unless it was selectively targeted at an individual or group.
I guess by my lights to be censorship it has to be:
-
subjective
-
unjust
-
systematic
Removing something objectively incorrect or in the wrong place is not censorship. Removing something justly proscribed is not censorship.
Removing a thread when one viewpoint or group posts about it but not when another posts about it IS censorship.
We’re talking about removing stuff at the judgment of the presiding authority.
Rationale is infinitely flexible. It will never be science. So it cannot be relied upon.
So, ideals aside, consider it in that light. Be realistic.
I did consider it in that light. This analysis is from the perspective of an observer, not the presiding body. Since the presiding body’s reasoning cannot be known, we observers just look for patterns of removal to determine whether censorship is occurring. These are the pattern-markers I look for.
Ha ha. What is the plan of this invisible deity?
Invisible deity? The observers are you and me.
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No. The wrong person should be debated openly IMO
In Reddit and Lemmy the names of the censors are hidden, and the debate is hidden too.
I don’t know how they do it on X and Facebook.
If a post or comment is removed on lemmy you can see the removed content and who removed it in the modlog
You can see the reason cited.
In almost all cases you cannot see who did it.
Any conversation about it is, as a rule, private
some debates are harmful. fox news often has “debates” which are staged performances. the debate isn’t important, the honesty is.
See: “openly”
your definition is arbitrary, which makes it meaningless.
It’s not about right or wrong.
Censorship is okay if the content harms those who hear it. You censor a naked man jacking off in a kindergarden because it will traumatize the children (and possibly more people).
If someone consistently spreads misinformation or disinformation that sounds convincing and will likely harm people (think donald trump and alice weidel) you need to censor them to protect those who are unable to understand the vileness of their agenda.
Equally, you need to educate both children to not go home with the nice man and the public to not listen to fascists and neoliberals.
I think this is where my belief ends up as well. In an ideal world we have great debates and good overcomes evil, but I think most of us sooner or later come to a point where it is hard to care. Protecting the vulnerable seems to be more important than 100% freedom of speech and acts.
Hmm. Maybe.
Not maybe. Just science. Example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10011534/
“Your mommy has to go away for a while, but she loves you and misses you” is less harmful than “your idiot mom got dragged under a truck and is in critical condition at St. Olga’s”
If they’re wrong, I think they should be censored.
All the antivaxers, all the flerfs, all the creationists, all the idiot influencers. They shouldn’t be allowed a platform to spread misinformation.
What’s a flerf?
I had to look it up, flerf apparently refers to a flat earther. Not related to TERF like I originally assumed.
Ahhh FLat ERF
I heard about this big Christian from a hundred years ago who doubted the existence of time, space and physical objects. I like that guy.
But sometimes you are wrong.
Yes, but I will admit it and correct the record when my mistake is proven. The categories of idiots I mentioned will not.
If the vast majority of people thought about anything that escaped the material world, maybe. As it is, anyone who understands how stupid, gullible, emotional, irrational, selfish and greedy human beings can be (especially those without any sort of moral code, like irreligious hedonists, for instance) and has the money to flood media with propaganda will inevitably make people believe what he or she wants.
The comments here are very idealistic, but I live in reality. I know there’s one wise man out of a hundred, the others focus on practical matters and football. Unless you can just snap your fingers and make people, for instance, not be stupid and intellectually lazy enough to vote for a M/BILLIONAIRE “wise leader of the proletariat” (honestly, every time I type something Trump related I wonder how we’ve made it this far as a species… then I remember the atomic bomb is not even a century old 🤷), then no, you WILL have to censor some folks. Or, said passively, some folks need to be censored… Sadly, in many countries, the ones who do the mass immoral brainwashing also have the political power to silence and incarcerate those who oppose them.
Maybe the power to censor could be kept out of the hands of individuals. Make it a democratic decision.
I believe in democracy as an ideal but I don’t see how that would work. Oh well.
Well we have this upvoting/downvoting paradigm. Simple and popular. Maybe that could be developed further.
Not sure a tyranny of the masses is a good idea, but maybe some community sourced guidelines on what works… But a lot of online communities are already based off of what works for communities, even if enforcement can be flawed.
