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Comment by geraneum

15 hours ago

Not to minimize the impact of social media censorship, but one should really live in a country like Iran to grasp what pervasive censorship is. Most people born and raised in the relative freedoms provided in modern democratic systems have no clue what it feels like when you have such dictatorships. I say this because, looking at the current trends, we _could be_ heading in that direction, and the comparison is apt.

26 comments

geraneum

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howunfortunate  14 hours ago

I'm curious what trends you see towards censorship?

Elon presumably being an exemplar for current trends: Twitter is unarguably far less censored than it was before (though censorship is still present). And Meta took note and also turned down its censorship significantly in response.

The Epstein files, while far less than hoped for by many, are another example of a trend towards sharing far more sensitive info than has been typical by past administrations.

There are many good examples you could point to of increased authoritarianism, but censorship in particular seems to be on the backswing, if anything.

Edit: oof, it's extremely concerning that the comment below was flagged

like_any_other  15 hours ago

[flagged]

  • geraneum  14 hours ago

    > You don't know what it feels like not because you're so free, but because you agree with the ruling regime on what it considers the most important questions.

    We don’t know what it feels like because we collectively participate and decide what should be considered and what not _periodically_ and it’s possible to change it, evidently, with various degrees and velocity by voting.

    > I would much prefer the dictatorship-style censorship, because our censorship is far, far more effective.

    Case in point!

    I’ve lived under both and can guarantee you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for has in their bag for you until it’s too late.

    • aaa_aaa  14 hours ago

      I guess he is not yearning for dictatorship, the style of censorship is the question. Preventing access to information is bad, but likely less harmful than deception.

      2 replies →

    • theendisney  14 hours ago

      Its true, all usually highly conplex world events are dumbed down to an insanely infantile level that carefully omits anything that may poorly reflect on corporate interests.

      Also obvious is that all news is made in a short list of countries. Everywhere else the best you can hope for are terrible events.

      You will only get opinions from a small list of talking heads.

      One might imagine populating the media with nothing but professors. Each field has new stuff every week. In stead you get Adam Savage. The name isn't by acident.

    • like_any_other  14 hours ago

      > by voting

      Not a single one of my examples was committed by the government (except if you count funding Carnegie Mellon and MIT). But even in cases when they are, voting rarely helps: https://www.woes.blog/p/tgr-democracy

      > you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for

      Re-read my sentence. I don't yearn for a dictatorship, I yearn to blunt and make obvious the current secret, subtle censorship regime.

      > has in their bag for you

      Is it jail?

      “White Lives Matter” Slogan Earns Two Dutch Men Imprisonment for Racism - https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/nether...

      Activist ran race-hate sticker library, court told - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51zn2l33r9o -Stickers with text like "It's OK to be White" and "We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066". For which he was later convicted and jailed - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867

      I repeat - you agree with the regime. You're floating in the river, letting it carry you where it pleases, while telling those swimming upstream that there is no current, nothing to struggle against.

      Edit as reply because "posting too fast":

      > How did all of these social media companies made a 180 suddenly after power shifts in Washington?

      None of the racist or right-wing or white nationalist subreddits got unbanned, American Renaissance is still banned off Facebook and Youtube, Facebook still explicitly bans white nationalism, and other social media ban it implicitly as "hate speech", TikTok bans "white lives matter" [1], and promised to ban even more [2] (under Trump's 1st term), while wikipedia doesn't even bother to mention that as censorship [3]. All of this is still the case under the current Washington. The only exception is Twitter, after Musk bought it - there, American Renaissance got unbanned.

      And a 180 would imply that these things are not only unbanned, but their opponents are banned.

      So if you're going to just make stuff up, i.e. lie, then I won't waste my time with you.

      [1] https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/tiktok-sparks-massive-b...

      [2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/tiktok-says-it-will-crack-down...

      [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok

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