Author warns about 'epidemic of self-censorship'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
We just went through the most censorious (and self-censorship inducing) few years in my living memory (I am almost 40), where people who we "asking questions" were called all kind of names by all kind of news outlets.
There's also a huge difference between "just asking questions" and "just asking questions" - and there are a huge number of people who are doing so in a bad-faith manner.
All IMO, of course.
Also - if your point of view is threatened by people just asking questions, then you really should think some more.
What is that?
Let's pretend I'm a card carrying jackboot wearing nazi. What question could I just ask, in bad faith? How come black people commit more crime? How come more black people are in prison?
Those are actually fantastic questions that, seriously considered, could lead to some significant societal change.
I can't think of an instance where the good/bad faith of the asker has any bearing on the question.
It often shows up more clearly in the follow-up questions. "But doesn't that mean that..."
"Just asking questions (also known as JAQing off) is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable (and hopefully not legally actionable) by framing them as questions rather than statements. It shifts the burden of proof to one's opponent; rather than laboriously having to prove that all politicians are reptoid scum, one can pull out one single odd piece of evidence and force the opponent to explain why the evidence is wrong."
I think it's about this.
The chilling effect is that the "traditional" media see something on social media, say a "racist" post (something they deem to be racist anyway) of some normal person, then amplifies triggering wide scale harassment, and "canceling" of the person.
These laws could help though if it's just your boss who wants to fire you, but most of your colleagues would like to support you, even if silently.
Most (all?) of continental Europe actually has such laws, which is why you don't hear about american style firings here. So, your logic has been tested in practice and found out to be wrong.
This can give the victim some valuable paid time though.
Chances are the boss is just doing what's political correct too due the pressure put by various groups not what he/she badly wants.
I thought this was a foregone conclusion.
In 1920, a newspaper publication or a public speech needed to be really outrageously beyond the frames of the Overton window to end up in mass protests, boycotts, etc. It took a serious effort to coordinate the outrage, so it only happened when people felt really deeply about it.
In 2020, with social media, the cost of spreading the outrage is nearly zero: a retweet or a repost, maybe with some a few words of an inflammatory comment added on the top. But with social graphs being what they are (highly connected via a number of popular "influencer" accounts), any bit of outrage has a good chance to spread quickly and widely.
The outrage can defend itself by directing the outrage at detractors and doubters, so attempts to actively stop it can make one a victim of it; the cost of spreading outrage, and the cost of ignoring outrage, is much lower that the cost of trying to calm it down, and / or to call to reason over emotions.
It does not help that any moderately public figure, especially a journalist, has to have social media presence, because it's such a powerful tool to spread their own publicity, influence, and agenda.
Freer information flows usually change societies. Invention of writing changed ancient societies profoundly. Invention of the printing press and movable type in Europe changed Europe drastically. The internet and social media are changing our societies seriously, as we speak. There's no way back to the pre-Internet state of society.
The only real solution for this is education, teaching people to think, to listen, to evaluate the quality of their sources of information, to draw their own conclusions, and so on. It's not perfect but the alternatives are closer to simple AI trained on a very limited and one sided dataset.
> This is a very astute observation. It’s also only really possible with centralized social media, not decentralized/federated.
I'm not so sure. Can you explain why you think that? The GP describe a social problem, while the difference between "centralized" and "federated" is a technical implementation difference. If you can "retweet" a post from a federated instance, then I don't see any barriers to this kind of emergent social behavior.
Federation is a solution to a set of very specific problems, it's not a panacea.
Uhm, are you familiar with the material Henry Ford was publishing in 1920? Specifically to increase sales?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
Perhaps this wasn't "beyond the frames of the Overton window" at the time, I don't know. But cancel culture ain't all bad!
It also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, and that's a line at which we ban accounts, so please stop doing that.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
She does seem to acknowledge that social media is not the best place for.good faith debate.
Also - if your point of view is threatened by people just asking questions, then you really should think some more.
Getting "called all kind of names" is not censorship, it's just criticism. That's actually an exercise of free speech by the name callers, don't you think?
[EDIT:] The irony of voting this comment down until it's effectively censored. Sigh.
However, they then slip into much more general terms, as though by induction any writers facing any kind of social consequences for expressing their bigoted views is the same as the fatwa.
That they neglect entirely to make any mention of Adichie's own case seems disingenuous.
As an atheist I have to object to this comment.
There's a vast difference between what you call "ultra-religious" across cultures and religions. For example, I have Born Again Christian friends who never miss an opportunity to try to bring me out of the dark side. I also have "ultra religious" Jewish friends. In both cases some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
We have to be careful not to classify-and-vilify. Every single one of us could easily fit into a classification worth of some level of vilification. That only serves to create further division and friction and does not make for a better society.
There are a lot of religious people who mainly keep religion and politics separate. And there are a lot of religious people — especially outside the United States — whose religion inspires them into more left-wing politics.
In any case, I said nothing about "nice people" and "non-nice people". But that's always a spectrum anyway. People are complex. They can be super nice to some groups of people and super mean to other groups of people.
I noted that. Same objection. Conservatives are not evil. Democrats are not evil. The ideological extremes in these schools of thought are represented by a very small minority, just like the ideological extremes in any religion.
We need to get away from hating people by attaching labels to them. The vast majority of Trump and Biden voters are the same people, with the same problems in life and the same dreams and hopes. The only people who work hard to divide us are the politicians. They need you to hate the other side and vote for them. They need division, not unity. By characterizing people with labels such as "ultra religions conservatives" (and equivalent labels on the other side) and then applying blanket negative qualities to entire groups labeled this way all we do is provide fuel for politicians to divide us further.
This, in my opinion, is one of the most egregious negative results of social media. It has provided political masterminds with the tools necessary to divide the population with amazing granularity and drive votes based on the hundreds, if not thousands, of categories they are able to provide.
While all of this happens we lose sight of what really matters. Politicians have been talking about fixing healthcare, education, jobs, etc. for a century, and here we are. If they actually were in the business of getting things done (rather than gathering votes) none of these issues would exist today. That's the great lie. That's what people need to wake-up to. We divide. They win. They do none of the things we all care about and need them to actually get done.
Do not label, subgroup and vilify people. This is unfair and inaccurate. It is no different from applying the average to an entire population, which sounds great and yet it is one of the worst mistakes (or lies) anyone could make in statistics.
So, what are we supposed to say? There's a problem, involving some people, and... [censored] that's all I can say.
[Edit:] LOL I just read one of your other comments in this thread:
> And, yes, I am sorry to say, the blood is entirely, 100% on the hands of the ideological left.
Wow, hypocrisy much? Incredible. What happened to "We need to get away from hating people by attaching labels to them", "The only people who work hard to divide us are the politicians", and "Do not label, subgroup and vilify people"? SMH.
You misunderstand. I am saying that applying labels to groups AND THEN using those labels to broad-brush is wrong.
Are all ultra-religious Muslims terrorists? No! Of course not! Yet, in some circles that very association was created. Can a Muslim be deeply religious and not be labeled a terrorist? Well, in my world, yes, absolutely. And I am an atheist. I don't agree with any religion at all. However, I am not going to take that to the deep dark level of labeling people and then characterize the entire group in various negative ways.
I am not asking you to self-censor. You can say whatever you want. More importantly, you need to understand that the reason people self-sensor is because of the very real threat of violence, professional and financial ruin that has been created over the last decade or so. That is not a all what is happening here. You can say whatever you want. I don't care and I will not hurt your in any way for it. Unlike others on HN, I never downvote someone with whom I have a disagreement. I am, however, pointing out that applying these labels in such ways is not fair or even accurate, just like applying the average to the entire population often leads to seriously flawed conclusions.
>> And, yes, I am sorry to say, the blood is entirely, 100% on the hands of the ideological left. > Wow, hypocrisy much? Incredible.
Who controls the vast majority of universities and the media? Which ideology is being pushed in these environments?
There's unfair broad-brushing and then there's the truth. If the characterization is truthful than it is not only fair, it is, well, the truth. "Most crimes in some cities are committed by gang members". True. This isn't broad-brushing, it's the truth.
Same issue with regards to what the ideological left has been doing. Example: The US border has seen over five million people pour through without any real controls over the last two years. This has brought with it a massive increase of human trafficking (a sterile term for "rape", "sex slavery", "abuse", "exploitation", "child porn", etc.) and deadly illicit drugs.
You have politicians --all of whom are on the ideological left-- as well as the leftist media and leftist universities (where are all the human rights folks?) completely and utterly ignoring this tragic reality. If you only consume news from the ideological left you probably have no idea whatsoever about any of the above. And yet, this is real, as real as young girls being sold into sex slavery by the thousands --in the US-- and dangerous drugs like fentanyl coming into the country unabated quite literally disguised as candy for our kids.
All of this is on the ideological left. 100%. In other words, that is not unfair broad-brushing, it's the truth. When you have Secretary Mallorcas and the White House lying to the American people about the southern border every day, well, the death and misery, the blood, is in their hands, and that's just the truth. Like it or not. And, frankly, if you are American and vote for these people, the blood is in your hands as well, because you enable them. And that is also the truth.
> What happened to "We need to get away from hating people by attaching labels to them"
The distinction you need to make is that (sometimes fine) line between the truth and unjust characterizations.
Both Liberals and Conservatives are culpable of saying that people on the other side are dumb. That's just not true. It's unfair. If, on the other hand, I say that Liberal politics is resulting in a massive increase in rape, murder, sex slavery, child pornography, mutilation, drugs, death, etc. at the southern border and that this blood is 100% in their hands, that is 100% verifiably true. The MSM ignore this on ideological basis. Human rights groups ignore this on ideological basis. Feminists, ignore this on ideological basis. And while they all look the other way masses of people suffer, kids are raped, killed, sold and abused. Unless people are willing to stop being tools of their respective ideologies these tragedies will continue.
Especially in some work settings, where 'approved' thought is rewarded and 'discouraged' thought is punished.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find it in places like Reddit. Post something nice about a politician from one side of the political aisle. Then post something nice about a politician from the other side. You'll see pretty quickly what it's about.
That conflates some very different things.
Of course posting someone's children's schools because of something they wrote is unacceptable.
There are absolutely things that people can write which they should be removed from their job for though, and where it is appropriate to campaign for this as a response.
If the teacher says "Race X is dumb and can not learn" then yes remove them as they are an educator and racist views on the ability to learn would impact their ability to teach
if the teacher says "We should have strong border controls" which is now viewed by the public as racist then no
Thus, when you write "There are absolutely things that people can write which they should be removed from their job" it is interpreted by me (and it seems many others) to be a much wider context than my narrowly focused statement
So you think that in this case employers and other employees should be denied the right to free association so that a racist can keep their job?
> In the febrile McCarthyite atmosphere fermented by the moralising left, remarks that could be construed as sexist mean that Brand is a sexist, which also meant that he is a misogynist. Cut and dried, finished, condemned.
It is a rather distressing habit to think in this way.
Show me where I said employers should be denied any rights?
The point I made is that inciting harassment of people's children at school is an entirely different thing to making them lose their job (and we've just agreed that there are some things people can write which they should lose their jobs for), and it's a mistake to lump those things together as the same "unconscionable barbarism" as she does here.
and
> if the teacher says "Race X is dumb and can not learn" then yes remove them as they are an educator
seem to be in conflict.
And they pretty much stopped there because everyone agrees that it was not comparable to a political belief and deserving of the same protections.
No, unless the bias actually shows up in their marking or treatment of students. People can say they believe all kinds of things but their professed beliefs and their actions don't always align.
A job entails certain duties, and "duties" are actions you must perform between certain hours, it does not govern how you should think or what you should believe. Or do you not believe that scientists can be religious too?
The problem here is that you do not believe that people can separate their beliefs from their duties, and you want to presumptively and proactively punish people without evidence that their beliefs have compromised their duties.
> People can say they believe all kinds of things but their professed beliefs and their actions don't always align.
Us software developers often end up doing what we don't believe should be done, in the spirit of getting things done within deadlines!
People aren’t getting cancelled because they think taxes are 5% too high
To be charitable, I suppose what you mean is: "I don't believe gays/blacks are being genuine in their efforts to promote their agendas" and "there has been significant election interference, including against my preferred candidate (Trump|Clinton)."
Note that the latter belief is also widely held by those who preferred eg Clinton in 2016, including Clinton herself, who has loudly and proudly declared repeatedly that she would/should have been president but for election interference.
So if the latter belief is enough to get someone canceled from their job, and you support that, then I guess that includes about 90% of the population. I don't think you're being reasonable here.
As to the former belief, I think looking back at how Black Lives Matter has turned out should be enough to convince most reasonable people that some of the biggest/loudest agendas promoted over the past few years aren't genuine.
As to your last assertion, you're correct. No-one is getting canceled over minor quibbles over tax rates. I don't know anyone who is claiming that.
“No-one” is a pretty broad claim, yeah?
> including Clinton herself, who has loudly and proudly declared repeatedly that she would/should have been president but for election interference.
The point you make is interesting, but surely there are pretty big differences in those two situations? Are they really identical in any way? I would be curious to know why they are the same thing and can be compared with each other like this - from my point of view, I don’t think I could agree.
1: https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...
Seems I heard this from his opponents during his term and I don't remember people losing their jobs over it. Also, does this include people who think 'nevermind democracy' for real? Communists, socialists?
What's happening is dangerous because there have been efforts to convince people that “I think you dont have the right to exist because you are gay or black or non christian “ == “nevermind democracy trump should be president even though he lost”. Once you see your opponent as a monster, treating them poorly is easy. When we abstract each other into caricatures through the filter of a screen, it becomes easy to say and do these things.
Neither. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33756452
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarv...
The problem is that anything can be "related to their job" if you're willing to stretch enough. For instance, by hitting PR notes like "do you want your company to be known as being associated with this kind of person."
It's a reasonable distinction, since except for the past ~10 years, all well-educated people used to understand that mobs are dangerous, even the well-intentioned ones.
It's really good to see you say the quiet part out loud, and I do hope some people start to become more aware of the friend-enemy distinction.
That's why when people who have the same stance as you get fired, specially when they have a history of trying to get other people get fired for something they said, always warms my heart.
I'm talking about when someone writes things which reveal that they hold values or beliefs which make them unsuitable for a role they hold.
On the other hand, it is certainly worthwhile to discuss what actually deserves such heavy-handed treatment, but that needs to be an honest and polite and patient conversation.
No, there are not. Anything you say outside of your working time is not the business of your employer.
As you say, doxxing is much closer to violence, and there's every reason to forbid it. But she's attracting attention because of what many people see as "ugly personal insults" against them.
Similarly, right at the beginning, she talks about being "afraid to ask questions for fear of asking the wrong questions". There is already a term for this, JAQing off, where questions are not sincerely intended because you're not going to listen to the answers. They may be intended to sow doubt, spread misinformation, or simply waste time re-re-reexplaining the same point. Those are "wrong questions" because they're not really questions.
This is not a problem young people have, this is a problem old people have.
Young people grew up with social media and are very savvy about segmenting their public persona from their private one. Young people understand intuitively that asking an edgy question on your public persona is an act of edginess in itself.
If you want to know why, the answer is that technology has weaponized the concept of push polling to its extreme (now “concern trolling” and such). As such it’s become difficult to distinguish legitimate discourse from bad-faith concern trolling. Young people understand this easily.
Older people on the other hand I’ve seen struggle with these concepts.
Regarding publishing and self-censorship in literature I can’t comment; most people aren’t publishing literature and I’m among the majority so I have no experience with that.
I’m saying that young people can navigate the environment they were raised in effectively.
You mention “understand[ing] the world better” yet I made no comment about young people being wise and understanding the world.
My only claim is that young people are capable of navigating between public and private personas such that they can satisfy their intellectual curiosity. We are not, as the author claimed, intellectually stifled by fear of asking the wrong question.
Feel free to state why you think this is not true, rather than just offering a mocking tone.
While that is true to a certain segment, I'd argue that the young people are actually worse than the older ones. There is a gap of those that experienced the internet before things like facebook/twitter became the face of the web, those i'd argue do fit the mold you're describing, the generation after them however? Their entire lives seem to be on the internet, with no regard for anonymity or oversharing with complete strangers, many dazzled by the idea of getting fame through those interactions and often turning what should be personal relationships with real friends into exclusively virtual interactions, and it compounds when you get older and you're further incentivized to put yourself publicly out there with LinkedIn and such. Of course there is a bit of a hyperbole but the point still stands.
This is exactly opposite of everything I've heard and seen. If anything, they're retreating from public places to Discords and private chats with friends to reduce the risk of becoming their school/community's main character. Opening up on public social media is seen as unacceptably risky.
edit: there's also the phenomenon where almost every weird, disingenuous, etc, callout in public is from someone under 20. It's fear-based performance. The action of someone still naive and inexperienced enough to think that if they seem virtuous, no one will come for them. It's been a huge problem on furry Twitter as the fandom gains more younger members with all the furry bait coming out of Disney, Pixar, and Netflix anime. It's how we got the sinful spine line and "any furry over 30 is sus" memes.
I self-censored, realizing a factual account from a prominent Nigerian author would probably be dismissed and I would be tarred for appearing to take a side in a debate where race and colonialism were being held up as reasons people like me just don’t understand.
The Republican share in the last 6 Presidential elections is 47%, 46%, 47%, 46%, 51%, 48%, the outlier being Bush's reelection in 2004. There's nothing special about Trump, electorally speaking. Republicans vote Republican.
"at 44.95%, Trump had the lowest percentage of the popular primary vote for a major party nominee since the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primaries."
"A total of 17 major candidates entered the race. Prior to the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, this was the largest presidential primary field for any political party in American history."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Republican_Party_presiden...
Trump had a number of advantages:
1) He was already super famous.
2) He was an experienced TV actor and entertainer.
3) He was rich.
4) He was a non-politician, which voters like, because they hate politicians.
5) He dominated every news cycle by continually saying wildly controversial things. The news media showered him with coverage over every other candidate.
Some in that party jumped on the feminist train and today nearly supports the opposite of what it once stood for. They complained about too many men and sexism in the party. Duh... Today they are yesterdays news but the party never really recovered and also left many politically homeless. Some of those vote for more radical parties.
Because despite all their saber rattling, the MO for US Republicans is to do things like ban books, sue teachers for teaching history, shun journalists, etc.
Obviously in general I don't want someone to face violence for expressing an opinion, but I don't want to hear bigotry like this being echoed in the news, in social media, by my friends, etc... because I like living a peaceful life.
Spending time radically deconstructing societal expectations was very good for my development as a young 20-something. Fortunately, from what I hear anyway, there is good quality LSD available and certainly no shortage of dicks to kick.
Deconstruction is THE artistic skill. Sometimes the parts whose sum make up the whole are kind of ugly on their own. We shouldn't be afraid of this when it happens.
There will always be the more literal-minded people who can't handle this, and I guess that's ok. But catering to them becomes a tiring, never-ending descent into boringness. Hopefully the kids actually taking acid these days are also laughing at some of the bizarre, authoritarian/well-meaning takes I keep reading on the internet, and just aren't commenting. Because they're too busy doing butt stuff.
If you want stronger moderation, so people are more civil, well, that's a type of censorship, isn't it?
If you want weaker moderation, then you should expect a lot of people to yell at you when you say something unpopular.
You can't have it both ways.
The problem doesn't seem to me like one that can be or should be solved (primarily) by turning the amount-of-moderation knob in one direction or the other.
I think that the philosophical basis of free speech, in the version I personally prefer and believe to have enabled the formation of Western liberalism, is the idea that society will be better off if more people are exposed to more different viewpoints. Translated into prescriptions for action, this means that you ought to minimise censorship of speech that will expose more people to viewpoints they have not encountered yet, but actually ought to censor speech that aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints (or at least work to limit its impact; the viewpoint that you should prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoint is also a valid viewpoint that more people ought to be exposed to ceteris paribus, but if you have to trade off between censoring the one idea saying that you should censor dangerous ideas and 100 ideas that proliferation of the one idea would result in being censored as dangerous, then the latter win by numbers).
"No censorship!" is a gloss of free speech that is catchy, but only really functions as a shorthand for the above version of it when addressed to people who already have the right mindset. An increasing number of people nowadays don't, as they are more driven by fear (of others, of uncomfortable ideas, and perhaps of themselves if they were to be exposed to those ideas) than intellectual curiosity, and this is the actual problem that we ought to be solving rather than just contemplating where to bring down the hammer of moderation.
To a degree I think you're doing what I talked about in my other comment- you might be assuming that most people secretly have opinions that they're just too intimidated to express.
I don't think that's the case at all. I think many people underestimate how deeply unpopular their opinions are. So when they get shouted down, they can't explain it in any other way then some kind of conspiracy to silence people like them. Do you want people to stop yelling at each other online? Let me know how that goes.
Any speech that argues for certain viewpoints to be banned, or tries to incite people to action that would reduce the spread of those viewpoints (e.g. by threatening or punishing anyone who would spread them). The most obvious examples are articles that outright call for bans, such as https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient... (about some Netflix show peddling what appears to be silly pseudohistory, tagline: "Why has this been allowed?"), or recent examples calling for removal of Twitter from app stores because of Musk's decision to unban Trump or otherwise trying to prevent that from happening (e.g. https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/twitter-employees-elon-...). People organising to contact the employers and other relations of those who voiced viewpoints they disagree with in an attempt to persuade them to terminate their relation with the individual in question. Campus activists campaigning to prevent talks by speakers they disagree with (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-...), or trying to disrupt those talks if they do happen, for example by pulling fire alarms (https://bc.ctvnews.ca/fire-alarm-pulled-during-demonstration...), which I assume are not lone-wolf actions but planned and organised in public channels.
Even in the case of "100 angry people responding back" that you cite, I think at some point a threshold is crossed where additional angry people responding clearly are not adding new perspectives but are rather, inadvertently or deliberately, intimidating the person they respond to by sheer mass of negative sentiment, resulting in a diminished likelihood that that person or anyone with a similar viewpoint will risk sharing that view in the future.
> you might be assuming that most people secretly have opinions that they're just too intimidated to express
I don't think that this is necessarily true or important, as most people have one of a very small collection of common opinions. My concern is more of the form that most interesting opinions are only held by a small number of people each, of whom sufficiently many are too intimidated to express them that I - or other people who would stand to benefit from the perspective - will never learn of them.
What proportion of these came out of Twitter? It seems to me at least that most of the abusive brigading comes from there. There seems to be something about how Twitter implements their "following" concept that creates arbitrary and pointless groups. Twitter is a bunch of virtual gangs fighting each other and any other discernible targets.
The right of the individual overruling all else is a baffling Western concept.
If you offend all of society (or more realistically, most of it), then sure, you are going to have a bad few years. No-one really disagrees there.
But if you offend some tiny segment of socieety, a single malicious and persistent "villager," then you should not have to endure that person spending all their time trying to ruin your life.
If it's one person, you would get a restraining order.
What do you do if it's 10,000 people, in a world of 7 billion? Clearly that's even smaller an influence than a single person in a village. We need a modern day equivalent of a restraining order against those 10,000 so they don't get you fired from your job, divorced from your wife, estranged from your kids, and sent packing from your bank.
This is what everyone's upset about. No-one is defending the dictator wannabe who is advocating for murdering half the planet to get socialism to finally work. Everyone agrees that guy's a nut, and it's fine if he gets fired.
Having a set, or usually just a subset, of crazy beliefs is pretty normal. The issue is if that leads them to being disruptive or doing a poor job.
Freedom of speech but not reach is something I can agree on but I suspect the bots and state actors will always be one step ahead.
Remember when the FBI would target black authors:
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/09/fbi-monitored-...
The Overton window:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220821062432/https://www.newyo...
Is David Duke a dangerous voice for bigotry, or a brave man speaking out against a system?
What about the famous Dutch cartoonist? Brave satirists, or racist firestarters?
What about Ilhan Omar? Defender of Palestinian rights or anti-Semite?
Is a sensitivity reader shining a light on an author's potential biases and blind spots, or are they a tool for censorship?
Are k-pop groups on Twitter posting into alt-right hashtags disrupting communication among hate groups, or censoring alternative viewpoints?
All of this is a matter of judgement.
Many would say that, hey, it doesn't matter, speech should be free and unfettered without exception. Sticks and stones, etc. The danger of censorship is too high.
Those in victimized groups, subject to harassment or worse, enabled by social networks and so forth, would profoundly disagree.
After all, it's easy to say that now after decades of progress for victimized groups. It reminds me a lot of anti-vaxxers today questioning the need for the measles vaccine. To them the disease is just a memory, the side effects are more dangerous.
And that's ignoring the fact that there's still unbelievable amounts of hate directed at victimized groups online.
This author may have a very valid point. Maybe self-censorship is happening at a rate above what is desirable.
But if my neighbor pops up online and advocates for white power and racial purity, you're darn right I want him to self-censor.
And, yes, I am sorry to say, the blood is entirely, 100% on the hands of the ideological left.
Anyone who does not think the current status-quo is wrong and seriously detrimental should take a moment to imagine a reality where the right, rather than the left, has that level of dominance and control. That scenario would be just as horrific as the current reality. This isn't good for society, no matter which side has dominance. The public has the right to be well informed with facts and not to be subjected to constitutionally-protected indoctrination.
The problem with the vast majority of the MSM and social media being ideologically one sided is that they create ignorance and false narratives that permeate the population.
A simple example of this is what has been happening at the US southern border. People who only consume leftist MSM/social media material have absolutely no idea whatsoever that over five million people have effectively invaded the US in the last two years. No clue at all. Even beyond that, they have no idea that these people, who, by definition, are unemployed, are not counted in unemployment statistics. Or that a good number of them will likely take entry level jobs away from other --existing-- communities. They have no clue about just how badly this has expanded both human trafficking and the mass entry of dangerous drugs into the country.
The fact that these kinds of things are not covered at all by MSM/social media entities makes for a population that is utterly ignorant of quite a range of realities. When it comes time to vote, this amounts to voter manipulation. If every media outlet constantly lies and manipulates the message, well, you are manipulating votes. This, again, is objectively wrong. Would you like the right to have dominance of the MSM and do the same thing? Likely not. It's wrong.
The press is protected by the US constitution in order for them to inform the people, not lie, indoctrinate and polarize through constant pounding with unified one-sided ideological messaging.
Recently we had a spate of incidents of killings by pitbulls in South Africa prompting some people to call for the breed to banned and the dogs confiscated and put down.
So, one seemingly intelligent pitbull owner took it upon herself to record a voicenote on a pitbull owners forum that had members of all races calling for black men to be castrated instead because of racist tropes of dogs and black people.
She got arrested (we do have hate crime laws) and her landlord is busy evicting her from the rental property.
That's such a gross misrepresentation. Does the article improve at all past this?
> A sensitivity reader is an additional editor [...]. This individual will conduct a very specific read of the manuscript, and offer notes on characters from marginalised groups, or elements which may cause offence.
(emphasis mine)
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/stop-m...
Looks like the article could've used a sensitivity reader itself, if it caused yout to get so offended you didn't read the rest of it.
This is also a gross misrepresentation. This article is drawing such a poor discussion.
Also some other HN comments here mentioned regurgitating of opinions on social media and how that influences this issue; so in the spirit of that, I recommend reading the article and forming your own! Not trying to be snide btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskaleut_languages#Internal_cl...
That you think the phrase "cleanse unpublished manuscripts" is a purely factual statement, but "a sensitivity reader is someone who protects marginalized people from systemic oppression" is not, simply reveals your own politics.
Both are statements of fact and ideology. Both are deliberate framings meant to push a certain narrative.
"Cleanse" invokes ideas of removal and censorship, centering on specific outcomes.
"Protects" instead emphasizes the needs of marginalized groups, centering on intent.
Both are value-laden statements.
So let's not pretend one is more "objective" than the other.
We’re self-censoring Even now cus We know it’s dangerous to ask uncomfortable questions. Believe it or not, everyone over 30 is not just an idiot or a criminal.
Massive backlash incoming. The USA is going to become very conservative again.
These pendulum swings are giving me whiplash
"Freedom of speech" however, and this is what many of the "cancel culture" whiners forget, also runs the other way around: when you behave like an asshole, drop N-bombs or otherwise become commercially untenable,
- platforms like social media can decide they do not wish to be a platform for your speech - if not out of respect for their own brand, they have to take care to not threaten their relationships with advertisers as Twitter is finding out the hard way. The calculation is simple: the income from advertisers willing to show up next to Alex Jones-style crap is way, way lower than the income from advertisers that Twitter loses because the brands act proactively.
- same applies for direct contracts from sponsors. While this is less common with book authors, media stars are, with "Ye" being the perfect example.
- publishers and especially reviewers can decide they don't want to publish or review your books/media
- fans can decide that they don't want to buy and read your books/media
To sum up: You can be an asshole and claim you're just "asking questions" or "exercising your right to free speech", but you can't at the same time complain when actions have consequences and you're being held accountable.
And a side note regarding the popular "just asking questions" excuse: for literally every single question that LGBT people or PoC get "asked", there are tons of answers on Google, in interviews, in media, in scientific literature. You don't need to answer a random Black person if it hurts them personally if you're writing out the N-word or a Jew if it hurts them if you deny the Holocaust - even if the specific person says it does not, the overwhelming majority of evidence and opinions will be very clear.
If there was no government-sanctioned affirmative action and if discrimination of the basis of race was not outlawed, all the consequences in the world would not change the fact that the "cancel culture whiners" (your own words) will rise in status (both social and economic) relative to minorities and liberals. So, yes - actions do have consequences, including for you.
The author is right, there are a ton of major consequences because of this censorship.
>Such a climate could lead to "the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity", the award-winning Nigerian author warned.
This is tip of the iceberg. The consequences are so much worse. They see it from an artistic point of view. I see it from a politics and economics point of view. The good news it looks like we're past the peak. The politics behind all this is about to become quite irrelevant, most likely end up as a new religion.
When I was working for big corporations and SV startups, I was extremely careful about what I said online, including anonymously. I was even afraid to like or give a thumbs up to certain comments. After I joined the blockchain sector and started earning some passive income, I started posting every single thought that came to my mind.
My ex-colleagues don't post anything on social media. They don't even click like on anything... They just consume but never interact.
I'm not surprised why ESG narratives are so pervasive on social media; people are afraid to express any view to the contrary. There have been no negative career repercussions for liking or promoting ESG content; quite the opposite.
Wow, I thought everyone was aware of ESG by now (especially on HN). It seems that social media echo chambers keep getting worse...
> I'm not surprised why ESG narratives are so pervasive on social media; people are afraid to express any view to the contrary. There have been no negative career repercussions for liking or promoting ESG content; quite the opposite.
.. OK, so now some more context: why is this bad? What is a "narrative" here? Why should there be negative repercussions?
Basically, some investors started considering broader elements of corporate governance in their decisions.
Now the right has latched on, claiming that choosing to invest in companies that, say, commit to sustainability initiatives or fight workplace harrassment, are somehow engaging in woke censorship
The irony is their solution is to try to ban the practice, thereby restricting freedom of association. Isn't it ironic?
They then become dependent on those investors, even though ESG policies cause them to lose money .. when the 2023 dot com bust goes full swing, those investors will get to decide which companies live in die in the same way TARP funds allowed the US Government to decided which banks lived and died.
Uhhhh, is this a good thing?
The less people see others expressing themselves, the less comfortable they feel in doing so.
Elon Musk goofing has been valuable but my concern is that some people will think that only billionaires are allowed to do so. It shouldn't become a status thing that's why regular folks like me need to do it too.
IMO, anyone who isn't directly under the thumb of the big corporate oligarchy has a duty to express themselves publicly to show that it's OK.
The thing that left-wing neoliberals don't seem to understand (or maybe they are evil and actually want this) is that if the number of people who are willing to express themselves drops below a certain threshold, authorities may start literally locking us up (or worse) and then the entire world will be just like North Korea or worse.
Valve's Steam is a complete censorship platform Everywhere where profits are in the game, you will be censored.
And let me tell you something else. The law or human rights don't end because it's "a private platform". This or those platforms are part of the areas law or human rights cover.
My freedom of speech ends where I insult or threaten someone, unless this person is insulting or threatening themself.
When I ask if there is a straight pride flag in Fallout 76 and get banned for that, that is unlawful and should be prosecuted. I'm part of the straight majority (95%), even asking why my sexuality isn't represented, but only gay and asexuality resulting in a ban? There is something wrong.
Everywhere where there's a profit interest censorship is happening. Steam is an awful place. You might say, who cares about a platform for games? Our kids grow up with this and we adults are also being treated like kids there. Steam has a feature where you get banned for even a year or two years or even permanently, just for speaking your mind if it's not in line with the company policy you will get canceled aka banned. Hundreds of years on the front, our ancestors fighting for the right to free speech and them some out of law company makes up their own oppressive rules, claims it doesn't have to follow the laws or recognize human rights. Valve should be sued and broken apart.
nice belief, but I've got foundational law protecting my right to freedom of speech