Not that it makes it any better, but they only took down the episode in Saudi Arabia, not globally. The headline makes it sound like they took down the episode altogether.
This must be a facetious comment. You don't see how it being only banned in Saudi Arabia is not as bad as Saudi Arabia complaining and having it taken down worldwide?
Plus, Saudia Arabia is not known as a bastion of personal liberty. But that's besides the point; they are completely entitled to perform censorship within their own borders. It's simply your opinion (which I happen to agree with, but it is not a fact nonetheless) that it's bad for them to have censored it within their own country.
I think it’s problematic. The fact it’s only censored inside Saudi Arabia means it doesn’t impact me directly. That being said, as the saudis continue investing in the west, in social media, in other Silicon Valley start ups, I don’t want there to be any chance these traditions (which I consider oppression) could seep up into my or my children’s way of life.
A government exercising control over the media in its country is a very clear-cut violation of the value of free-speech.
The moral question is whether American companies should help foreign governments shut down free-speech. Just like google in China. And the consensus seems to be "No."
America controls the limits of commercial free speech in countries around the world through its control of Visa and Mastercard. American standards (by which I mean limits) on free speech are exported and controlled by limiting what credit card companies are willing to permit to be sold.
The consensus appears to be no among people with no power to effect those decisions. The consensus among legislators and members of the public who could change the minds of legislators is quite different.
It’s not all or nothing. While a takedown is bad (and illustrative of some real problems in Saudi.) Netflix having a presence in Saudi let’s them spread their media and worldview into that country/culture. Unilaterally disengaging just gives Saudi people less access to a roughly liberal and western source of culture.
What we (speaking as a fan of western still liberalism and rule of law) in the west need is to be better able to provide a full throated explanation and defense of our principles and value prop. There seems to be a very real movement toward an alternative authoritarian world view based on the promise of prosperity and stability through social control, social control that takes full advantage of the enormous surveillance and monitoring capabilities of modern technology.
Free speech doesn't make sense if you aren't a democracy. Public speech the government officially disagrees with is incitement of rebellion. In a democracy, there isn't this existential threat to the country. Given that you are a dictatorship, regulating speech to avoid insurrection is morally right.
> And the consensus seems to be "No."
Consensus is completely irrelevant when answering a moral question, unless it instrumentally affects the moral calculus.
Hey, let's not overstep and say that dictators are "morally right" to stop free speech. Legally right, perhaps, but come now, Western democracies would laugh at saying decorators keeping peace is "moral". In fact, they'd argue the opposite. That dictators should morally step down and cede power to the people.
You are not in charge of “overstepping.” If dictators don’t stop free speech, a revolution will happen, and the country will go to shit. I have already given the precondition that the country is a dictatorship.
We have the U.S.S.R., Arab Spring, and the French Revolution as fine examples of the country going to shit.
If you’re a dictator and want to transition your country to democracy (I’m not sure why you’d call that morally good, but let’s go with it), you don’t make the first thing you do to allow free speech. Free speech shouldn’t come until after you have elections.
I agree it would be way worse if Saudi Arabia had the power to censor globally. If only Netflix would remove VPN restrictions so people can still access it within the country. It was a great episode!
This doesn't impede the Streisand Effect taking place right now though, which is the real story here. Not sure how many views the video had prior to the takedown but now it's at ~1.2 million and is probably to going to be at 3x that by the end of the week.
Youtube, Netflix, Amazon frequently take down content for countries. So it’s really nothing new. I mean, I don’t like the 15k takedowns listed in google’s annual report [0] for example. But it’s no longer newsworthy.
It’s entirely within companies’ ability to not comply but it means pulling out of the US or Saudi Arabia or whatever country is making demands.
In the 90s the dream of Sealand is that it would allow companies to not be forced to do stuff like take down content. That didn’t work out. Mostly because I think companies enjoy making more money the easier way.
