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 LordofHats wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Censorship doesn't have to be governmentally imposed, if it is then it may be impinging on the right to free speech, but if it's not then it doesn't stop it being censorship.

Technically yes it does. Censorship is by definition an action that is taken by a state to suppress undesired information.

Actually the definition of Censorship is the "suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.", according to wikipedia.

It does not have to be the state. To use your example, if Penguin edited the book so that all curse words are removed, that would be censorship.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Actually the definition of Censorship is the "suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.", according to wikipedia.

A private organizations reach is limited to its property. It's web pages, printing presses, and business interests. It can bar you from using their property as a venue for your own speech, but that's the end of its reach. Their rights end at showing you the door and asking you to speak somewhere else.

This is one of those instances where I find Wikipedia to be lacking, and indeed people in general need perspective on what it is we're talking about. It is intrinsically impossible for Penguin Books to suppress your speech. Penguin books cannot unilaterally ban you from saying something. No private organization can match the capacity of a state to suppress speech, because no private organization is so far reaching. People have foolishly chosen to conflate the suppression of speech by states (censorship), with the ability of private groups to refuse to participate in speech (self-censorship for lack of a better word). These two things are not the same in legal status, conception, or outcome and should never be conflated by throwing them under the banner of the same term*.

*Admitting that in part this is kind of running into a language barrier.

It does not have to be the state. To use your example, if Penguin edited the book so that all curse words are removed, that would be censorship.

If Penguin Books were the only publisher on the planet it might be, but they're not especially not in an age where self publishing is free.

Weren't the Hollywood Blacklists enforced by private groups, and not the government? Whilst the HUAC certainly started it, was it not private groups, such as the MPAA, who decided to willingly bar suspected communists from employment?

A private organisation may be limited to its property, but what if its property was of significant size, and held considerable influence?

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case in the States at the moment, so the likelihood of a private group determining what can or cannot be published across a or several mediums is pretty low.
But then again, I don't think anyone was expecting the Red Scare and McCarthyism either.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Weren't the Hollywood Blacklists enforced by private groups, and not the government? Whilst the HUAC certainly started it, was it not private groups, such as the MPAA, who decided to willingly bar suspected communists from employment?

I'm calling for us to understand the distinction between what the government can do and what private organizations can do, which is not to say "government bad, private good" or "private groups can't screw you over." They totally can, but how we balance the conflicting rights of private persons is intrinsically distinct from how we check the power of the state.

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case in the States at the moment, so the likelihood of a private group determining what can or cannot be published across a or several mediums is pretty low.

Indeed, and this is ultimately the logic behind provisions of the Civil Right's Act that bar you from refusing to serve someone based on their race, because should such practice become widespread, it constitutes society wide discrimination (it's also hard to fathom such discrimination occurring on a purely social level. Inevitably it would become governmental, if it didn't start there in the first place).

The tyranny of the masses can be just as damaging as the tyranny of the legislature, but they are two different beasts (even in a democratic system).

 whembly wrote:
There's no fundamental difference between Penguin Books refusing service to publish a book full of cuss words, and Mystic Pizza refusing to (hypothetically) cater to a SSM ceremony.

Zero.

You can make that argument, but it has nothing to do with censorship or the right to freedom of speech. Declining to provide a service is not censorship, and the hypothetical "no gay customers allowed" business is being punished for discrimination in providing services, not anything to do with free speech. The owner and employees are free to say "gay marriage is not marriage" all they like, they just can't (under some laws) refuse to sell their products to customers because of their sexual orientation.

 LordofHats wrote:
Technically yes it does. Censorship is by definition an action that is taken by a state to suppress undesired information.

Actually, no, it's not. Like, literally, go read a dictionary, the idea of state imposed censorship is a specific type of censorship, but censorship just means to remove content which an entity finds unsuitable. That entity could be a person, it could be a company, it could be a university, it could be a government.

It only infringes on your right to free speech when it's the government doing it, but private entities are fully capable of censorship and discussion of censorship outside of government censorship is not without merit. For example, Universities are often the subject of censorship discussions because people want to see them as forums for open and adult discussion. That's not to say all censorship is bad though, but it's worth discussing what we can and can't say and the reasons for it. To brush it off as "well it's not the government so who cares" misses the point of the discussion.

Oxford online dictionary:
1 The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

Cambridge online
Censorship: the act of censoring books, films, etc

Censor: a person whose job is to read books, watch films, etc. in order to remove anything offensive from them, or who reads private letters, especially ones sent during war or from prison, to remove parts considered unsuitable

to remove anything offensive from books, films, etc., or to remove parts considered unsuitable from private letters, especially ones sent during war or from a prison:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
go read a dictionary

Prescriptive or descriptive?

Cause ones just going to tell you how people use a word, and the other is going to gauge more directly what the word means and the stupid ways people use words they don't understand.

Not that I explained my thoughts on that well in my initial response to you. I think my subsequent posts have made the distinction I'm drawing more clear.

Well government control of information is always bad, and non sanctioned stuff will be still available on the web, you may need some software or hardware to get to it.

Censorship only makes organisations or ideology (or immoral behavior) go underground.

 LordofHats wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
go read a dictionary

Prescriptive or descriptive?

Cause ones just going to tell you how people use a word, and the other is going to gauge more directly what the word means and the stupid ways people use words they don't understand.

Not that I explained my thoughts on that well in my initial response to you. I think my subsequent posts have made the distinction I'm drawing more clear.

I think perhaps the connotation of censorship being governmentally imposed is primarily an American thing.

I've had plenty of discussions about censorship that weren't focused on government, it's just muricans who jump up and down saying how it's not a problem as long as the government isn't the one doing it. I found there were a few times while living in the US that people jump on a certain connotation for a word and it becomes difficult to use it in a general connotation like I would in Australia, the opposite is probably true as well where we have latched on to specific connotations.

But non-government censorship is a more interesting topic from a cultural perspective.

I don't mind censorship in certain contexts, for example dakka practices censorship by deleting certain posts and locking certain threads. But I do think it's important that we retain some areas of society which are relatively free from censorship and we should constantly be asking the question *why* are some things censored to that as a society we aren't just creating taboos for the sake of taboos.

Legally private individuals are allowed to censor things, but by discussing it we can highlight the absurdity of certain types of censorship and start to sway common opinion.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think perhaps the connotation of censorship being governmentally imposed is primarily an American thing.

Hmm. Could be.

But non-government censorship is a more interesting topic from a cultural perspective.

Not sure if I'd consider it more interesting, but it's definitely much more complex as an issue. Deciding where one right begins and another ends is a cluster feth. As fluid as Constitutional language can be, it does anchor the issue where the state is concerned, and kind of leaves the matter almost exclusively in the hands of experts to decide where it begins and ends. Day to day interactions and social acceptability are far more nebulous.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:
Believe it or not, but the government isn´t the only actor that can censor people.

Not really. People declining to listen to you or give you a platform to speak from is not the same thing as censorship. The government can prevent you from speaking by force. Individuals and corporations can not.

So if Putin privately owned all of Russias big media stations it wouldn´t be censorship, but if the media stations where under the control of Putin as a government agent it would be censorship?

 LordofHats wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Censorship doesn't have to be governmentally imposed, if it is then it may be impinging on the right to free speech, but if it's not then it doesn't stop it being censorship.

Technically yes it does. Censorship is by definition an action that is taken by a state to suppress undesired information.

Could you point me to that definition? Because the definitions I see doesn't exclude private actors as potential censors.

 ulgurstasta wrote:


Could you point me to that definition? Because the definitions I see doesn't exclude private actors as potential censors.

People really need to learn how to use dictionaries in school;

The act of censoring

As for what is censoring;

An official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter b : an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful (Merriam Webster)

Maybe it's an America thing, cause I never really thought of that, but censorship as defined by a prescriptive dictionary (which lists words by linguistic association rather than colloquial use and is a lot better if you actually want to talk about what words mean) in my experience almost always references the term in respect to official policy, or in regards to acts of suppression (and I explained my thoughts above on how private parties on their own lack the capacity to suppress speech in a way equivalent to a state).

Either way, I think in the future I'll just skip the semantics and get on with my point.

 ulgurstasta wrote:
So if Putin privately owned all of Russias big media stations it wouldn´t be censorship, but if the media stations where under the control of Putin as a government agent it would be censorship?

That's not really a relevant comparison because the issue there is not Putin the private citizen owning the media, it's Putin acting in his role as the state owning the media. Waving around a piece of paper saying "look, technically this is private ownership" doesn't change the fact that you're talking about state control of the media. It is, however, a significant fact that this is the example you picked. By using one that depends on state involvement rather than private citizens with no state connections you acknowledge that the problem here is the state having the ability to use its power to control information, not individual citizens making free choices about what to say.

Could you point me to that definition? Because the definitions I see doesn't exclude private actors as potential censors.

Even if you find a dictionary definition that isn't government-only it isn't relevant to this discussion. Private actors can not keep you from speaking on the internet, and the OP's example of Facebook/Google/etc is certainly not censorship.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I feel like this is relevant.

Sometimes sometimes not.

Sometimes a disliked opinion can lead to valid social exclusion. Examples are some extreme political memberships, paedophilic berhaviour etc.
Sometimes a disliked opinion is protected of itself, and the reactions shown in the cartoon might be a hatecrime.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I feel like this is relevant.

Sometimes sometimes not.

Sometimes a disliked opinion can lead to valid social exclusion. Examples are some extreme political memberships, paedophilic berhaviour etc.
Sometimes a disliked opinion is protected of itself, and the reactions shown in the cartoon might be a hatecrime.

If we were to follow the comic at face value, the people on the Hollywood blacklist, Galileo, Copernicus, Socrates, Jesus and Martin Luther King all must have been donkey-caves who spout bs. They were criticized for their opinions right? Therefore the people listening must be right.

To be fair, Galileo was kind of an donkey-cave

 LordofHats wrote:
To be fair, Galileo was kind of an donkey-cave

True, he was a bit of a jerk. He did make significant contributions to the field of physics, but as it turns out insulting your critics is not a good way to convince them on the merits of your theories.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
If we were to follow the comic at face value, the people on the Hollywood blacklist, Galileo, Copernicus, Socrates, Jesus and Martin Luther King all must have been donkey-caves who spout bs. They were criticized for their opinions right? Therefore the people listening must be right.

No, that's not what the comic says. It says that the people listening thought they were s. And they did. The fact that their critics didn't like them doesn't mean that the critics were correct.

 Peregrine wrote:


That's not really a relevant comparison because the issue there is not Putin the private citizen owning the media, it's Putin acting in his role as the state owning the media. Waving around a piece of paper saying "look, technically this is private ownership" doesn't change the fact that you're talking about state control of the media. It is, however, a significant fact that this is the example you picked. By using one that depends on state involvement rather than private citizens with no state connections you acknowledge that the problem here is the state having the ability to use its power to control information, not individual citizens making free choices about what to say.

To make my point more clear, If a private person (a Bill Gates or a Rupert Murdoch or whatever) owns the majority of media in country (which isn´t far-fetched as all the media stations in the US are owned by 6 big conglomerates) and consciously decides to not let some opinions get heard that wouldn´t be censorship? But if the government owned the majority of the media in that country and tried to suppress those same opinions, that would be censorship?

What does it matter if the person in power has government hat on or not?

 Peregrine wrote:

Even if you find a dictionary definition that isn't government-only it isn't relevant to this discussion. Private actors can not keep you from speaking on the internet, and the OP's example of Facebook/Google/etc is certainly not censorship.

With the increasing privatization and consolidation in media, it´s not far fetched. There has been several attempts to increase corporate control over the internet.

 ulgurstasta wrote:


To make my point more clear, If a private person (a Bill Gates or a Rupert Murdoch or whatever) owns the majority of media in country (which isn´t far-fetched as all the media stations in the US are owned by 6 big conglomerates) and consciously decides to not let some opinions get heard that wouldn´t be censorship? But if the government owned the majority of the media in that country and tried to suppress those same opinions, that would be censorship?

What does it matter if the person in power has government hat on or not?

If a non government entity wanted that majority they would get into a conflict with a democratic and functioning government because of possible monopoly abuse. Of course if you have an totalitarian government then they might just let a non government entity own the media (if they also benefit from that arrangement). The root of the problem is the totalitarian government (because they make the laws for everyone) and not the private entity going for the possible monopoly. If you have a working government then it should make total control/abuse by non government entities hard/impossible.

 ulgurstasta wrote:
What does it matter if the person in power has government hat on or not?

Because the government can suppress speech by force. The government can say "you are not allowed to say this" and if you try to avoid the ban they can punish you for it. They can remove your website/confiscate copies of your book/etc, and even put you in prison if you don't cooperate. A private citizen or business can not do that. They can decline to publish your speech, but they can't do a thing to stop you if you decide to publish it elsewhere. This is exactly the situation that exists on the internet right now: Facebook can remove your posts from their service if they don't like what you have to say, but they can't stop you from making your own ConservaBook or CommunistBook or PornBook or whatever and saying whatever you want. Sure, you might have a hard time getting anyone to read what you have to say, but your failure to attract an audience is not the same thing as being censored.

Now, a single entity owning too large a share of the media does raise some monopoly issues, especially in the broadcast TV/radio market where the radio spectrum is a limited (and government-controlled) resource that new companies can't access, but anti-competitive behavior being bad does not make it censorship.

With the increasing privatization and consolidation in media, it´s not far fetched. There has been several attempts to increase corporate control over the internet.

{citation needed}