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Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

> The left opened the doors of academic and internet censorship

This was almost entirely an astroturfed campaign, which very effectively worked to whip people up into believing that they were being censored.

Whenever it came up in the last few years in online conversations, I would ask "OK, so what are you being censored from saying?" Dozens, maybe a hundred times, of me asking that question, and it was nearly always crickets in response.

What is the evidence of "the left" censoring academia? Whenever I dig into that, it's sloppy science, fringe theories, or straight up crackpots who couldn't get published in a journal, who then found popularity on youtube and podcasts doing the "I am being censored by Big Science" grift.

If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.

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> What is the evidence of "the left" censoring academia?

Here's a decent summary of how some of these censorship doors were opened: https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/02/25/covid-censorship-yes-bi...

There are also more vivid and recent examples, like barring universities from divestment from Israel (ie, 0]), which has happened in quite a few 'blue' states. Not to mention sending in armed police (ie, [1]) to break up peaceful anti-genocide protests.

0 - https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-israel-gaza-campus-p...

1 - https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-campus-p...

I guess I must have hallucinated Trump threatening universities for anti genocide protests.

You certainly seem to have hallucinated me saying anything about Trump.

To prevent premature downvotes, preface: this comment is not about the merits or demerits of the censorship, just that it took place. Whether it's good or bad was a different question, but it very much happened. One might say that it wasn't "the left" behind it, but if you'd take approval ratings of this censorship at the time across left/right, the latter would've been strongly opposed with the former mixed at best, if not broadly in favor.

> If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.

Sure, happy to. I'll focus on the "internet" part. There was mass censorship on the major US social media platforms during COVID in the name of "preventing racist attacks against East-Asians". This is widely documented and admitted.

Yishan Wong, ex-Reddit CEO:

> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic

That Meta and Twitter banned accounts for discussion of it is easily verifiable, Wikipedia also banned discussion of it.

In Twitter's case, they even had a CCP figure on their board of directors during this time [1][2].

[1] - https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/3940206

[2] - https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/5/25/twitters-new...

You’re right, but a large part of the reason many come here is to participate in a strongly left wing idea reinforcement operation. HN skews left and votes in brigades to enforce that.

So many times I’ve opted to not refute things because I know it’ll be downvoted to oblivion, and because the community at large doesn’t care to change their views in the slightest.

It’s good for tech news.

(I'm the person you're replying to, in case you might get confused)

It's very unfortunate that all I received was downvotes, without a single substantial reply as to what would be particularly incorrect about the observations I made. This does indeed seem to stem from infallibility tribalism: "I identify with group A, so literally anything that can be taken as pointing out a flaw of group A is an attack on me as a person".

At the same time, this isn't a particular hallmark of the left; it's even worse on the right. In any right-dominated space, my comment, if the roles were swapped, would simply have been instantly removed rather than just being downvoted. r/conservative is a very prime example. Twitter is another one, having become much more eager to instantly abide by requests from foreign autocratic regimes to remove/ban accounts that oppose them after the Musk takeover.

I do wonder if you're going to downvote me for this comment, reaching a new "irony level" world record :)

It's definitely worse on the left, the group that's constantly inventing new ways to censor and exclude talk, not just action, the right leans far more libertarian in that regard. Most conservatives hate Reddit though so I doubt that's a sample of anything. I don't think X is a good example either, it's far less censor prone under right-leaning leadership than before.

And I'd never downvote something that's not entirely dumb as long as it's written in good faith.

> the right leans far more libertarian in that regard

That is the advertising. Meanwhile, the reality is the the US right is banning books in school libraries, telling people what they can do with their bodies to the point of needless deaths, requiring lie detector tests for hiring in the FBI where the question is "do you harbor any bad feelings about the boss?" The Speaker of the House just stated that "separation of church as state is a myth." I could go on and on.

As a lifelong independent, to me the above disconnection from the advertising and reality is the biggest reason that I can plainly see that pledging allegiance or alignment to any political party leads to the death of one's critical thinking abilities in that space.

I don’t think happening to not fall mostly within left or right makes any of your ideas necessarily more valid, there’s a smart and dumb versions of left, right and center to an extent.

All the things you listed imo are either extremely marginal or not an issue at all, especially compared to the lefts recent antics. Then again, I was pretty left leaning until I lived in SF, which quickly dissuaded me of it, along with the American left moving pretty far leftward. 15 years ago I guess id be considered somewhat left leaning even still.

I believe that categorizing things into left/right is folly.

Talk to me of specific policies. (I mean this in general, not you specifically.)

Everything else is high school football-style fandom (my team vs. your team) used divide and conquer us.

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