[gavanwoolery]

I would not say it is "unfounded" - but rather that censorship is ill-defined, at least in the public eye.

We have come up with words that are easier to swallow like "deplatforming" and "fact checking." Censorship occurs in many forms, and not all of it is directly blocking access to speech (IMO).

There is a common misconception that censorship can only occur at the public (government) level, but not the private level. As per Wikipedia:

"Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies."

There is also the issue of orthodox views and orthodox privilege (as per Paul Graham's explanation). Many conservative views are not orthodox to the point where you can be canceled for merely quoting someone else or citing facts (yes, both have happened in the past). So there is some form of self-censorship (this is related to "social cooling" IIRC).

I think it all boils down to this: which side supports censorship and which side condemns it? There you will find your answer on who is more adversely affected by censorship.

Note: this is not a left or right issue, historically speaking. For example, look back to McCarthyism.

[monopoledance]

> I think it all boils down to this: which side supports censorship and which side condemns it? There you will find your answer on who is more adversely affected by censorship.

I don't think that's a valid metric at all. This doesn't reflect the quality of censored expressions, their factual validity (mere facts are not opinions) or evolutionary adaptations to the discourse, like deflection ("No u!"). You assume a zero sum game.

See how diversity initiatives and co are confronted with "this is racism against white people!". Does this reflect an increase in discrimination against "white" people, or an decrease in discrimination for "non-white" people?

Then, people getting kicked off a Platform for being mean and abusive, doesn't mean they got censored for their political views, even if they claim that's the case.

All, I am saying is, your metric is problematic.

[gavanwoolery]

You are absolutely correct - perceiving censorship does not equate to being censored.

That said (IMO), there is a lot of abusive behavior on all sides - so the question becomes, is the treatment equal? It may just serve as a litmus test, at worst a false positive, to consider which side thinks they are being censored more. :)

[netizen-9748]

Would you mind sharing details about the time someone was canceled for citing facts? I stay out of the popular culture loop so I likely missed it.

[edbob]

> David Shor, for example, was until recently a data analyst at a progressive consulting firm, Civis Analytics. Shor’s job was to think about how Democrats can win elections. When Omar Wasow, a professor at Princeton, published a paper in the country’s most prestigious political-science journal arguing that nonviolent civil-rights protests had, in the 1960s, been more politically effective than violent ones, Shor tweeted a simple summary of it to his followers. Because the tweet coincided with the first mass protests over the killing of George Floyd, it generated some pushback. After a progressive activist accused Shor of “concern trolling for the purposes of increasing democratic turnout,” a number of people on Twitter demanded that he lose his job. Less than a week after he tweeted the findings of Wasow, who is black, Civis’s senior leadership, which is predominantly white, fired Shor.[0]

The censorship and control of the visibility of information hits Democrats as well as Republicans. See Tulsi Gabbard's appearance on Joe Rogan. Cancel Culture is about making all unorthodox beliefs and facts unspeakable, whether on the left or on the right.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

[gavanwoolery]

I should correct that slightly because no one ever cites facts or quotes in isolation - usually they are in the context of a broader argument or hypothesis. But there have been a few cases, here Google will probably serve you better than my feeble memory. One (rather controversial) example I can think of is James Damore. His hypothesis may have been wrong (I will leave that up to the reader), but he at least did seem to earnestly back it up with data and research papers (and even though there is some debate there, at least a few experts have publicly agreed that the science he cited was well-established).

Note: I am not defending Damore's position, only stating that it was a great example of the "yellow/blue dress" when it comes to orthodox speech. People seemed to be pretty fiercely divided on whether or not his memo warranted being fired.

[retox]

Try tweeting anything about sex/gender or crime statistics that doesn't fall within the socially acceptable window of discussion.

[mancerayder]

I think it's fair to say the target of the censorship actions are non-mainstream views more broadly.

I agree with you we've been overly conditioned to worry about government censorship and not private platform censorship, and yet the former have elected leaders while the latter are unaccountable to the public.

That was in a sense Merkel's shock and public criticisms of the deplatforming actions. It's ironic because the criticism wasn't that there was censorship, it was that private companies were allowed to do it and not government.

Who is right, the American laissez-faire pro-corporate/neoliberal philosophy or the traditional European approach that wants government to have that duty?

[ttt0]

> Who is right, the American laissez-faire pro-corporate/neoliberal philosophy or the traditional European approach that wants government to have that duty?

I'd prefer neither and that they'd just stop censoring people, no matter if it's the far-left or far-right. But America has the advantage of the First Amendment (assuming that's not going to be repealed). So maybe I'm naive, but I think in this particular case, at least the government would have to obey the free speech laws, unlike private entities.

[gavanwoolery]

Someone else on HN (I cannot recall who), stated something along the lines of (paraphrasing):

"Centralized power can be abused in the hands of the government or the private sector [via monopolies]"

Whether or not you agree, I thought this was an elegant way of phrasing it. The cure, IMO, is to ensure that both ultimately answer to the people, although I have no idea how that is practically enforced.

[monopoledance]

It's funny, because Merkel's party is actually pushing for the decision about what counts as "hatespeech"/"terrorism" to be made by the platforms themselves. The CDU wants there to be nothing edgy at all. Pretty similar to China's "social credit dystopia" moral panic, actually. Just different means.