Caitlin Johnstone writes in a blog post over at Medium that corporate censorship is ramping up while people are distracted by the menace of government censorship.
It is true that it is the most controversial and repulsive speech which is most severely in need of protection, and that a government which is granted the power to silence Nazis can be expected to use that power to silence political dissent. But there is no danger of this ever happening in the United States, because corporate censorship can be used to silence anti-establishment voices with far less pushback.
Egged on by the resurfacing of obnoxious and sometimes illegal groups, more groups are pushing for, and sometimes getting, full online silence from other voices. Those in power will have corporations do any of the dirty work that might generate push back.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday August 17 2017, @09:50AM
I agree. I think that a lot of people are forgetting that unlike conservatives, the fragmentation of "our" (American liberals) side means that it rarely manages to rally together enough to effectively pressure companies into things, and Big Business of any type tends to lean liberal for very long... Which means that any precedents being set now can and will be used in ways we won't like at some point in the future.