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from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: 2) by J053 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:38PM (4 children)
(Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:03PM (2 children)
One problem with that False Equivalence argument, just ain't true. As in false. If you look at the lists of people banned from social media you wouldn't say something that ignorant. A leftist has to repeatedly call for violence against specific named individuals before they eventually get suspended. On the right you need merely cite official U.S. government statistics to get your account closed. James Woods lost his Twitter account for reposting an image and asking "This can't be real, can it?" It was a 4chan meme but the point is in clown world it is getting hard to tell the difference. And on the left they get get to whine and open gofundme accounts, the right can't accept credit cards anymore and anyone caught sending bitcoin to an unperson loses the ability to convert cash to crypto. Again, if you can't see the difference it is colossal ignorance or arguing in bad faith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:42AM (1 child)
people banned from social media
GP said "Google." I don't think he was talking about Google Plus. I think he meant Google News and Google search.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:08AM
The banning is comprehensive now. Search, Youtube, all of the major social media platforms, payment processors, web hosting, you name it and they are banning people, websites and whole ranges of ideas. The Left now chases people down in boring mundane jobs and gets them fired. Remember that waitress who donated a few dollars to a cause in CA that they hounded out of a job a few years ago? She isn't the only one, they saw it work and have been replicating it nationwide.
If it doesn't stop it will get ugly. What do they think they will get when they create thousands of unemployable, desperate and very angry men? The lefty who went after Congressman Scalise was a typical leftie, utterly incompetent. He cut loose with enough firepower that anyone halfway competent would have racked up a body count but thankfully he wasn't competent. The Right is full of gun nuts who DO know how to hit the broad side of a barn. Morality and a inane knowledge that violence will only complicate their cause holds them in line for now. People don't always think straight when they are sufficiently desperate or angry. Antifa keeps poking the bear and now their pet FEDs are helping them, the state of many of the Alt-Right camps today would best be described as "seething." Actually think the Left's plan with today's action is to bake one of them off to give the media a reason to shift off of this debacle of a SCOTUS fight now that they are losing it badly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:09AM
"[...] a lot of progressive dolphins have been snagged in the net, including Democracy Now, the Nation, Media Matters, the Intercept, Salon, Truthout, the ACLU, and even WikiLeaks." [truthdig.com]