[shripadk]

I got banned here for saying this but I'll continue to say it nevertheless. We are already in the Censorship Era. This is an Orwellian Nightmare. The quicker this is brought under control the better. The last thing we need is Corporate Overlords controlling what we say or do online. This includes Hacker News as well.

[int_19h]

The "Orwellian Nightmare" is 100% correct, but it's not about 1984. In 1943, Orwell wrote an essay, "Freedom of the Press", that was meant to be published as a preface for "Animal Farm". Ironically, the essay itself was censored in exactly the manner Orwell described, and would only be published in 1973. Here's bit that rings truer than ever:

"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

[illustriousbear]

I think this is a fair point.

That said I think we're more a corporate oligarchy that is behaving like a feudal system.

We essentially seem to have corporate lords who are trying to appease the king government. Whether it be via censorship or other tools.

[cortesoft]

You got banned for saying that? I am skeptical

[afavour]

We live in an era of unprecedented communication. You can instant spread a message to millions of people at little or no cost. Compared to history (even relatively recent history) we are in no way in a “Censorship Era”, that’s utter hyperbole.

[ArcVRArthur]

I agree entirely.

[ClumsyPilot]

In dictatorships at least there is a clear authority with clear rules. Here we have multiple aithorities makiblng it up as they go

[sova]

Judges get appointed, not elected; in a similar way, tech companies get appointed to these bizarre overseer positions, and it seems that they do not mind playing judge, jury, and exe.

[simonh]

So choice is a bad thing then?