I am both happy to hear BBC talking about this, and also can't help but feel like they (alongside with the rest of MSM) are the main source of that problem (even bigger than social media, as they shape what social media landscape looks like).
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.
I'd disagree that the BBC is more responsible for a backlash than social media is. I'd suggest that it's social media that shapes the wider media landscape (particularly in recent years twitter), not the other way round.
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.
> There's also a huge difference between "just asking questions" and "just asking questions"
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.
"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'd rather live in a world where raising certain questions is seen as "bad faith", than a world where the experts have decided that certain topics are "too important" to be discussed.
Also - if your point of view is threatened by people just asking questions, then you really should think some more.
Social Media is the root cause, the problem is Social media became the "Source of news" for most "journalists" who lazily just regurgitate the same info, using the same "sources" of twitter, facebook, etc.
It's so true. The only people sad about Twitter's current state, are the journalists who (I assume) felt powerful and knowledgable thanks to constant scrolling.
Social media is a harassing tool, and can be a pretty blunt and heavy one (see "cancel culture").
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.
That it is. I once made mistake of questioning basic assumed facts of event A that just broke news and a swarm of people almost immediately descended on my posts to in a cleat attempt to get me fired ( I blocked lots of people that day but it left a very unpleasant taste and colored my view of social media ).
> 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.
Uhm, are you familiar with the material Henry Ford was publishing in 1920? Specifically to increase sales?
Surely if that was being used to specifically increase sales an analogue of cancel culture wouldn't really do anything since the zeitgeist held that opinion somewhat, if it was enough to drive up sales for a company of ford's size.
Decentralization has some advantages but it also enforces bubbles further. My corner of social media will have no overlap whatsoever with your corner and they drift further and further apart.
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.
>> 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.
> 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.
I think you misunderstood the comment, the self censorship is in the wider public not the media, the media via social media is the cause of the censorship
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.
The real issue is not having laws to prevent firing someone for writing political incorrect stuff on social media not that mainstream media amplifies whatever someone posts on social media.
Such laws, if existed, would be of limited help. Would you enjoy to continue working when your boss badly wants to fire you, and your colleagues badly want to have you fired, but they can't by the law? How soon would you leave by yourself? Being fired usually at least involves some severance pay.
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.
>Would you enjoy to continue working when your boss badly wants to fire you, and your colleagues badly want to have you fired, but they can't by the law? How soon would you leave by yourself? Being fired usually at least involves some severance pay.
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.
If you cant have something you don't have to want it either. It's irrational and a waste of time to want to see someone fired or to want to fire someone if it's not going to happen.
There are always ways to make someone's employment feel miserable while staying on completely legal ground. If a boss wants someone fired but can't fire, the boss (and worse yet, coworkers) can "help" the person make the right decision and start looking for a new opportunity.
This can give the victim some valuable paid time though.
Well as Ngozi Adichie says we must reestablish good faith as the default position. If we jettison good faith and always assume bad faith then indeed asking questions becomes impossible. But I'm sure that's not what people want.
She does seem to acknowledge that social media is not the best place for.good faith debate.
I'd rather live in a world where raising certain questions is seen as "bad faith", than a world where the experts have decided that certain topics are "too important" to be discussed.
Also - if your point of view is threatened by people just asking questions, then you really should think some more.
>> "Not when applied to the quasi-religious civil morality of the modern left."
You could put this sentence in a museum. A real cultural artifact. It's nonsense, but very much worth preserving as a reflection of the rhetoric of our times.
edit: They can file it in the gallery of things people once considered true.
I use uBlacklist to highlight results for good websites like reddit, stackoverflow, or official documentation. It also blocks hundreds of SEO websites and low quality stuff (quora, geeksforgeeks, clones of stackoverflow). You can even block stuff by title, like "\d+ (best|essential|...).*". Sometimes a get 2 results per page as a result of this.
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.
The article talks about Salman Rushdie. The MSM didn't put a fatwa on Rushdie, and then stab him nearly to death. That was ultra-religious conservatives. Ultra-religious conservatives are also responsible for much of the censorship in the United States, especially in schools, refusing to allow kids to read certain books or be taught certain subjects.
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.
I'm guessing Rushdie is the only specific case referred to in the article because they can assume that the vast majority of their audience will consider what happened to him abhorrent.
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.
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.
Notice that I said "ultra-religious conservatives" and not "ultra-religious people". It's both a religious term and a political term. It describes people who bring their religion in an overt way into a certain brand of politics.
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.
I find it very ironic that in a discussion about self-censorship — remember, that was the original topic? — you want me to censor my usage of any labels to describe people.
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 want me to censor my usage of any labels to describe people
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.
"There is a difference between valid criticism, which should be part of free expression, and this kind of backlash, ugly personal insults, putting addresses of homes and children's schools online, trying to make people lose their jobs."
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.
Maybe they should be removed from their job if it's something related to their job, but it almost never is. It always comes down to "this person disagrees with me, therefore cause their employer a nuisance till its no longer worth employing them". There's not a moral court judgement or fairness, it's just some people harassing other people and insisting they deserve it.
> Maybe they should be removed from their job if it's something related to their job, but it almost never is. It always comes down to "this person disagrees with me, therefore cause their employer a nuisance till its no longer worth employing them". There's not a moral court judgement or fairness, it's just some people harassing other people and insisting they deserve it.
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."
But you forget to mention that the disagreements are things like: “I think you dont have the right to exist because you are gay or black or non christian “ or “nevermind democracy trump should be president even though he lost”
People aren’t getting cancelled because they think taxes are 5% too high
If you take the most uncharitable interpretation of the most extreme position, then of course the backlash looks justified. But have you tried actually understanding the "other side"?
The point is that the extreme positions are the ones typically resulting in backlash. Nobody is being canceled because they speak out against the capital gains tax. "Oh, you know the ones"[1]
What does it mean "you have no right to exist"? I see this phrase used a lot, often to describe things like "you shouldn't be allowed to play football in a female team if you have male genitals" and I'm sorry, the two are not equivalent.
> nevermind democracy trump should be president even though he lost
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.
No-one believes either of those things. You should familiarise yourself with the arguments and beliefs of people outside your ideological bubble.
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.
> 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.
She's distinguishing between mob behavior (fundamentally emotional, with people trying to cancel someone they just heard of 2 minutes ago, likely without caring about any context or evidence), and intellectual criticism.
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.
Outside the confines of them making official representation about their employer or actions they would take under their authority/power/employment or while on the job, I do not believe there is anything someone writes for which they should be removed from their job.
To clarify - say a schoolteacher writes expressing their strongly held personal racist beliefs (without specific reference to how this relates to their teaching role) would you consider that a reason?
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
> Outside the confines of them making official representation about their employer or actions they would take under their authority/power/employment or while on the job, I do not believe there is anything someone writes for which they should be removed from their job.
and
> if the teacher says "Race X is dumb and can not learn" then yes remove them as they are an educator
Your comment was vague to the limits. In modern days cancellation can come from many statements not directly connected to a person's employ, plenty of people have been fired for the social media posting that have NOTHING to do with their employment
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
> Your comment was vague to the limits. In modern days cancellation can come from many statements not directly connected to a person's employ, plenty of people have been fired for the social media posting that have NOTHING to do with their employment
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.
It is telling that you believe because I said "Someone should not be fired for..." translates to you "Government should prevent someone from being fired for..."
Show me where I said employers should be denied any rights?
This whole discussion is rather vague from the start - the only specific example given in the article is Rushdie, but the quote I responded to was much more general.
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.
I don't disagree, I support the "One Billion Americans" idea. That has little relevance to if I think someone that disagrees with my position should be fired or accused of racism if they happen to think differently from me
That sounds like a great example of the confines of "actions they would take under their authority/power/employment or while on the job", if those racist beliefs are relevant to their teaching job. Or at least something that the school should follow up on to determine if their expressed beliefs lead to unjust actions in the real world.
A person is schoolteacher by profession.
The same person holds a personal belief.
The same person writes about personally held belief.
There is some distance between job/profession and expressing personal beliefs.
Nope, because next time it might be for something else. Maybe next year society decides to dislike socialists. Just because I dislike racism and racists does not mean we should fire them for things outside their job.
> To clarify - say a schoolteacher writes expressing their strongly held personal racist beliefs (without specific reference to how this relates to their teaching role) would you consider that a reason?
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.
The "ugly personal insults" part really stands out. It seems inherently self-contradictory: "I should be able to say anything I want, but you should be restricted in the nature of your reply."
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.
I think she's talking about the level at which this campaign would occur. In the past it would have been at a far higher level. Now, almost any sentence can be taken in the worst-faith way, and a campaign be started based on that assumption.
>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.
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 am quite confused by your phrasing. What "quiet part"? This has never been a quiet part. There has always been a self-consistent view of the world in which employers have been asked to respond for perceived immoral behavior among their employees, even if that behavior has little to do with their job. Nothing here is new. You can argue whether that world view is itself moral, but it is silly to claim it is not a fairly standard or common world view that plenty of people consider "obvious and correct".
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.
> young people were growing up "afraid to ask questions for fear of asking the wrong 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.
>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.
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.
>> "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."
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.
Oh yes, the proverbial wise young people who understand the world better. Not being able to be genuine on social media when they spend a large proportion of time "socializing" there clearly can't do any harm. In no way can this bring about a distorted view of reality and of what people actually think. No, not a chance, young people are savvy about these things.
Every source of media is a distorted view of reality. This has been true since the printing press was invented to today. There is no crystal ball.
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.
How ironic! I considered linking to an interview with this author about the phenomenon of online swindlers in her home country when a debate about same sprung up in a company listserv. One side of the debate was offended that the topic was broached at all.
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.
I think there will be a push back against the current censorship and coercion. After a while people just get fed up. The longer it takes the bigger the swing. I wouldn't be surprised to see DeSantis president or someone even "worse".
If you're pushing back against censorship & coercion, why would vote for the guy who worked with his state legislature to pass a bill (stop woke act) that was all about limiting what teachers could teach? Luckily, a judge blocked the bill on First Amendment grounds.
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.
Public school teachers are paid with taxpayer money, that private citizens are forced to give to the state whether they want to or not. And because of compulsory education, many of the students are forced to be in the classroom, whether they want to or not. It is completely expected and not at all "censorship" for the people's elected representatives to have a say in what employees of the people's government do with the people's children and the people's tax dollars. There is literally no other way to run a public school system.
I don't expect any. The reason people self-censor is that the fight just isn't worth it. They just want to carry on with their lives and not get dragged into a fight by people who care way more than them.
Yeah but Trump was too much of an unstable clown to do anything meaningful. Trump made the whole thing about his persona. I think people like DeSantis are more on point(i.e policy not cult).
If taxpayers pay your salary, taxpayers (and their elected representatives) should have oversight over how you spend that money. Possession a fancy title from an institution with a fancy name shouldn't exempt anyone from that. There is no Constitutional right to other people's tax dollars
You don't need to send your kids to university if you think that all history faculty are propagandists. What I'm sick of is people shitting all over a community I love simply because they hate them and want to see them suffer. It is just visciousness coded in "think of the children" policy. No outcome is permissible except for people to be crushed under the boot.
You codify ignorance through force of law.
DeSantis and Trump are the same.
You might enjoy looking at the sibling post talking about how desegregation was actually bad. That's your ally here.
Guilt by association is a logical fallacy. That is not a good argument.
The community you love has done damage to the society you depend on. I have no viciousness towards any one of them except where they insist on remaking society in their image to the detriment of all others.
Ignorance through force of law would apply if the history were factual. But it's not. Preventing bad ideas from being taught is the opposite of codifying ignorance.
Please define "perpetuate flamewars" for me because I don't understand how you use that phrase.
I didn't attack the messenger, which is the definition of that phrase I usually use. I also very carefully only addressed the points the other person made.
Edit: also, I have read your comment from a long time ago about the expected value of a discussion. Perhaps that is the definition you personally use? As in, you consider any comment to be "perpetuating flamewars" once it is made in a discussion with a lower expected value than you want to accept.
I can't argue with that definition; in fact, I would accept it wholeheartedly, but (and this is just a suggestion) it might be better to make that the site guidelines, as well as to adjust your wording when you tell people to knock it off as you just did.
For example, if you came to me and said, "The expected value of this discussion is lower than the value that this site can accept, so please stop this discussion here," I think I personally would take it much better than being accused of perpetuating flamewars. And I would be more likely to obey.
You can still ban people for not obeying such requests too. I think you should.
Your comments in this thread were doing ideological battle on a classic flamewar battlefront. You even used the word "fighting" to describe what you were doing. Surely you can understand how lines like ""wokeists" have caused so much damage to this country" and "The community you love has done damage to [...] society" are flamebait?
If you get into back-and-forths with an opposing user around that kind of thing, you're perpetuating flamewar. This is clearly not curious conversation.
I like your suggestion about expected value, and I'm glad you noticed that rather obscure point of mine - it's one of my pets. However, there are many ways to lower the expected value of a thread, and flamebait/flamewar is just one of them. I think it's important to be specific.
> Your comments in this thread were doing ideological battle on a classic flamewar battlefront. You even used the word "fighting" to describe what you were doing. Surely you can understand how lines like ""wokeists" have caused so much damage to this country" and "The community you love has done damage to [...] society" are flamebait?
No, not really. I was answering certain accusations with my opposing opinions.
Unfortunately, I can't understand where a person is coming from if I don't understand their definitions of certain terms, and I can't understand your definitions of flamewar and flamebait.
> If you get into back-and-forths with an opposing user around that kind of thing, you're perpetuating flamewar. This is clearly not curious conversation.
I guess I misunderstand the purpose of HN because this line of yours makes it seem (to me) like I cannot debate political things at all, or rather, certain topics (does "around that kind of thing" means political things?), but that doesn't seem right either.
> However, there are many ways to lower the expected value of a thread, and flamebait/flamewar is just one of them.
That's why I think putting the lowering of the expected value of a thread into the guidelines is the right choice: it covers more situations.
> I think it's important to be specific.
I have shut off the discussion you didn't like, but it would be helpful to me if you were more specific about what you see as flamebait and flamewar. If I understand what you want me to not do, I'll avoid it, but I can't avoid something I'm unclear on. I also don't like self-censoring more than necessary (that is what the posted article was about, after all).
However, I expect that you're busy and won't be able to answer me, so extra self-censoring might be what I have to do. It makes me sad, though; I felt like HN was one place where I didn't have to do that, and now, it does not.
Edit: one thing that I could consider is trying to not answer every accusation that I'm a terrible person. Ten years ago, my Christian faith would not be attacked so openly. Now, people consider me a terrible person for believing those same things, and I find myself defending my faith a lot, albeit indirectly.
I will try to do that less on HN at least. Would that be what you are doing of me?
I believe Trump was voted in by people who were fed up with the new sanctimonity, especially on topics like sexism and racism. Their defense was to vote for vulgarity and Trump seemed to be a master of that if nothing else.
I suspect most of who supports him are not less sanctimonious, just in ways that preserve their status quo. They are not objecting self-censorship but objecting who and what gets self-censored.
Trump received 46% of the vote in 2016, which is less than Mitt Romney's 47% in the previous election, but squeaked by in the electoral college against an extremely unpopular opponent.
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."
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.
I prefer vulgarity to censorship, regardless of whether it comes from the left or right. Trump's issue was his complete incompetence, not his vulgarity. Not that I liked his vulgarity, which was hardly presidential.
I do too. Not from the US and I don't think I would have taken the step to really vote for him. In Europe we have similar problems though. We had a pirate party that championed freedom of expression and technology open to everyone.
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.
Such a good, and important, take on the state of affairs. Outright censorship is bad. But even worse is when an environment is fostered in which folks will preemptively self-censor. It’s terrifying.
Everybody self censors all the time. We learn to do it as children, as it is a normal part of human psychology. It is so automatic that evidently people have forgotten that they do it.
And spending some time as a young adult exploring that is crucial to a person's development. I'm reminded of a part in Illuminatus when one of the characters while high "...probably made a good argument for rape and murder while he was at it...".
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.
How so? I personally prefer to live in a world where expressing certain opinions in public is socially unacceptable and will make you an outcast. For example, I don't want to hear anyone's transphobic opinions, as is the case with this author. I really wish she would self-censor like she claims is such an epidemic, instead of being featured in the BBC doing the exact opposite.
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.
The sense that I get, as a side note, is that people who complain about cancel culture don't understand, or can't accept, how deeply unpopular their opinions actually are. They assume that everyone secretly agrees with them, but for some reason nobody is saying it, so there must be some conspiracy afoot to silence them. The actual fact is that, as I pointed out above, you can make people be civil, but you can't make them agree with you.
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.
What kind of speech aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints? If you say something and then 100 angry people respond back, are they silencing you, or is it just that you said something that made a lot of people very angry?
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.
> What kind of speech aims to prevent people from being exposed to certain viewpoints?
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.
>"We are all familiar with stories of people who have said or written something and then faced a terrible online backlash," she said.
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.
No-one believes in the right of the individual overruling all else. I'm not sure how you are coming to that conclusion.
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.
I think we can all agree their political views are nuts but if they are a stable and non-disruptive person who does a good job at the water treatment plant there is no need to fire or ostracize them.
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.
Amplification is a problem like we see in the US twitter - we also have our own collection of unhinged racist morons but generally it is not as bad as the US where the algorithm amplifies it.
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.
The elites (and the corporate journalists of billionaires) often control what is “allowable” as speech with reach. Free speech is allowable so long as it doesn’t have reach. Once you pass that line you become a target for elimination like Assange. Look for allowable discourse from weathervanes like billionaire owned and controlled media like the NY Times, Washington Post, The Economist etc…
Soft power is enforced by hard power. Now the bidding for enforcement is outsourced to hall monitors on social media accusing even academics of being foreign agents or treasonous or some -ism.
Fundamentally, the problem is its often very difficult to tell the difference between the brave iconoclast shining a light on sensitive issues, and the troll or worse, looking to cause harm to others.
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.
We have been living a reality where you truly have to worry about your career and safety. This, in a western country where freedom is supposed to be the law of the land. Yet, that isn't reality today at all. Say the wrong thing and your career is over. Or worse.
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.
>> "She continued: "Nothing demonstrates this better than the recent phenomenon of 'sensitivity readers' in the world of publishing, people whose job it is to cleanse unpublished manuscripts of potentially offensive words."
That's such a gross misrepresentation. Does the article improve at all past this?
According to quick googling, this is exactly on the spot. Here's a Guardian article that talks positively about those roles and describes them in exactly the same way:
> 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.
What you react negatively to is not that the description is inaccurate (it's perfectly accurate), but that it omits the ideological justifications. Many proponents of sensitivity readers would probably answer the question "what is a sensitivity reader?" with something like: "a sensitivity reader is someone who protects marginalized people from systemic oppression and etc...", which is not just a description but also a justification with a whole lot of ideological baggage. If it makes you uncomfortable to see a phenomenon like this explained in a simple, factual manner, consider why that may be.
> If it makes you uncomfortable to see a phenomenon like this explained in a simple, factual manner, consider why that may be
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.
Which part do you think it misrepresents specifically?
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.
The function of a sensitivity reader. A sensitivity reader would, for example, remind a writer that "Eskimo" isn't actually a tribe, and suggest a much improved story by representing an actual northern tribe like Inuit or Yupik. They're there to help writers see past stereotypes, and that makes for better writing.
I don't disagree with your main point but your example is perhaps not so good. There are people who describe themselves as "Eskimo" and "Eskimo" is a reasonable name for the category that includes Inuit and Yupik. Of course there are also different kinds of Inuit and different kinds of Yupik. There's a tree diagram here (referring to languages rather than directly to people and this particular diagram uses the term "Eskimoan" rather than "Eskimo"):
so Eskimo is an offensive word and has to replaced by one that's appropriate. So I don't see the difference with the description offered in the article
No it does not. Just another generic "person with huge public reach complains about being criticized for their bigotry" article from the BBC. Somehow these people never see the irony about articles like this being in the biggest news outlet in the UK.
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.
Well yeah... you can be an asshole towards minorities or anyone else as long as you're not running afoul of libel and hate speech laws, that's called "freedom of speech".
"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.
>actions have consequences and you're being held accountable.
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.
Ah yes. A famous best-selling author featured in the BBC is completely censored and her career is wrecked because... she got some angry tweets? What are you talking about?
As far as a career goes, at some point expressing an opinion crosses over to creating a hostile work environment.
As far as people yelling at each other online goes, you can’t really stop that. If you want stronger moderation, then people will complain that the mods are censoring them, if you want weaker moderation, people will complain about all the other people shouting at them. Not sure what the suggested solution would be. Perhaps the author wants the platform itself to favor her opinions specifically?
> I'm sure this has nothing to do with people pushing back on her goofy opinions
Ad-hominem.
> Not every thought that goes through a person's mind the need be put out into the open immediately.
Straw man.
> When you're from a marginalized community and you've had your existence questioned a thousand times,
She's a black woman, I'd say there's a good chance she's been marginalized already and knows what she's talking about.
> you can be excused for being a little impatient with someone who's actually curious the 1001st time.
She's not talking about someone being a little impatient. To quote the end of the article:
> this kind of backlash, ugly personal insults, putting addresses of homes and children's schools online, trying to make people lose their jobs. [...]. It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken, but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking."
Ok I guess I have to spell this out explicitly: the self-censorship thing obviously applies doubly to the trolls and doxxers and "virtual vigilantes." Nobody deserves that kind of treatment.
> > Not every thought that goes through a person's mind the need be put out into the open immediately.
>
> Straw man.
Doesn't sound like a straw man to me. What is self-censorship if not thinking through what you want to say before speaking? Generally when I speak I try to think about what effect my words will have, and if they would have what I consider to be a bad effect either on myself or others, I self-censor.
The difference between thinking before speaking and self-censorship is that in one case you don't say something because you think it isn't true, and in another you don't say it because you are afraid of people finding out that you think it isn't.
Self-censorship is the result of thinking before speaking. The arguments which made you reach that result can vary. You can choose to self-censor whether you're right or wrong.
Nobody thinks they're wrong. So I'd make the bold claim that more often than not people who think before speaking are going to self-censor because their opinion is unpopular even if objectively correct. One right statement to the wrong crowd can "sink your ship" with some terrible consequences.
The combination between this "thinking" process and the reaction of certain groups selects in favor of the opinions held by the most belligerent group. You're more likely to self-censor when your audience will throw a brick at your head compared to when they just give you a stern response.
Anyway you can have a stupid opinion on one topic and a very sound one on another topic. You can promote equality of gender while rejecting equality of race/color. Even if you believe both are equally correct you may censor your second opinion to not have it sink your first one.
Thinking before speaking is filtering out anything where its cons for being said outweigh its pros. It has nothing to do with whether or not you think something is true or false. It doesn't even need to be a truth statement.
Self-censorship is a different name for the same concept. The only reason I avoid saying certain things in certain contexts is because I believe there will be negative backlash that outweighs any possible gains in communicating my thought.
I don't quite agree with your argument.
In the literal sense thinking before speaking is just that. It can lead to you rephrasing your thoughts multiple times before you find a way to convey what you want to say in such a manner, that a listener is able to understand you.
Of course, it can also lead to an act of self-censorship if the cons outweigh the pros.
Originally, the word "censorship" was not used in a context where this consideration was done, be it thoughtfully or at all.
So while defining self-censorship like you do is certainly possible, it is inconsistent with other meanings of censorship, where multiple parties may be involved.
It is up to you, of course, to expand its meaning to "thinking before speaking", but other people seem to mean similar, but not quite equal, things with these words. Unifying them by using a weaker definition (Although I don't believe that "think before you speak" is well defined at all) will only lead to a loss of information that facilitates misunderstandings. I'd rather know that I might be misunderstanding something instead of having peace of mind with a definition that is so broad it becomes meaningless.
If someone is convinced that black people are inferior to white people, I want them to be afraid to express that. I don't care about hearing evidence on certain subjects, and I want there to be societal repercussions for disagreeing about things like that.
While I do agree "cancel culture" in the way of "someone misspeaks once, so the twitter mob digs up their entire past and puts them on trial for every shitty thing they've ever said" is toxic and unhelpful, I'm perfectly in agreement that deplatforming bigots is actually helpful. As a concrete example, I'm very happy Kanye West has lost essentially all of his contracts and a lot of his supporters; he thinks "Jews secretly control the world" is true and wasn't afraid to say it, maybe others will be now and will self-censor.
The problem, as usual is that "bigot" is just another word in the long list of words used to silence people. To quote Paul Graham:
<<In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. By now these labels have lost their sting. They always do. By now they're mostly used ironically. But in their time, they had real force.
The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.
We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.>>
Coming from an ex-communist country, where the word: "reactionary" is still useless after being used as a weapon for so long, I find it really scary that it is now, again, used unironically in the west and appears to be regaining its power.
My grandmother lost her job because she was part of the anti-communist, democratic opposition, and the reason given to her was that she was "divisive, and anti-worker".
So you suggest that everyone can express any opinion, no matter how inflammatory, without any repercussions? To be honest I find an absolute stance on that ridiculous. The questions I would ask are:
- what kinds of speech are unacceptable?
- what reaction does society take when someone crosses the line?
To continue on the Kanye example: essentially he lost his job, and I think that's perfectly acceptable. His employers/contractors found his speech disgusting, and fired him/ended his contracts. You can compare that to what happened with your grandma, and the only reason I think it's wrong is because I think pro-capitalism should be an "allowed" opinion, even though I disagree with it. To me the difference is that her opinion was a matter of political opinion, Kanye's directly targets jews, a marginalized group (note: in your grandma's case, "anti-worker" is no targeting a marginalized group since in a communist country the workers are definitionally not marginalized).
Every country I'm aware of (even the United States, for instance bomb threats are illegal) agrees that some speech should be prohibited. Where they disagree is what is prohibited and what the punishment is. In Germany, you can be jailed for denying the holocaust. Is that just? I don't really know but most of the Germans I've met agree with the law in this case.
Yes, you've gotten exactly to the heart of what I was trying to say. Of course there are people who get unfairly maligned for saying the "wrong" thing (or when the things they say have been taken out of context).
But people pushing back on what someone says is a normal, healthy part of discourse and it absolutely should scale with the power and influence of the person voicing that opinion (Kanye is the perfect example).
>If someone is convinced that black people are inferior to white people, I want them to be afraid to express that.
Elaborate on how and why exactly you think they should be afraid.
Should they be afraid for their physical safety because you want violence against them to not be punishable (or the state to have to enact such violence by law)?
Should they be afraid for their freedom because you want hate speech laws instituted that would land them in jail?
Nobody is afraid to voice their opinion because of the disapproval of leftists and "liberals" so it should be one of the 2 above or something similar.
No. Communists are not nazis. Communists do not advocate for the extermination of any marginalized group. I made it very clear that the opinion being expressed matters here, so I'm not sure why you'd think this is inconsistent?
As a person from an ex-communist country, whose family was killed by the communist government for being farmers I would disagree with that. So my question would be - why jail nazis but not communists?
Oh wow, you are talking about my grandfather who was killed because he owned 2 acres of land and his family was sent to Siberia.
At least now I know why you have such blind spot re. communists, as you do sound like a tankie alright.
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN or use it for ideological battle. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Please also omit name-calling and swipes and personal attacks from your comments here. Believe me, I know how intense it can get when other people's points land on old wounds, but we're all responsible for managing our reactions.
> racists should find it hard to make friends and find employment.
It may surprise you but any form of social ostracism that is not government sanctioned will not achieve any of that regarding regular people. It will affect only celebrities and a segment of the public intellectuals. (But there will be a different segment that will benefit)
Regarding kanye west, his biggest problem was that a significant chunk of his "sponsors" (=board members of companies) and business partners were actually jewish. Had he said the same thing about Australian Aboriginals (or the same thing about jews but if his main market was East Asia), he'd be completely fine after the initial outrage subsided. So I don't think you actually understand anything about your example at all.
It is a straw man in that it implies that anything self-censored this way is something not worthy of being put out into the open, completely missing the point that a thought very well may have been been worth sharing.
In essence, only the thoughts that "should not be put out into the open immediately"(1) are attacked, instead of the original meaning, in which all thoughts are included. It is left open to the reader to select (1) in such a way that the argument becomes strong for them.
People who fought for free speech thought otherwise. «I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it», was said in 18th-century France, when one could literally be decapitated for holding a wrong opinion.
(The quote is usually ascribed to Voltaire, but some researchers say that he was quoting another French philosopher.)
What goofy opinions? The only one I was able to find seemed pretty reasonable:
"Trans women are trans women" and is still the opinion of majority of people. Did she say anything else?
When approaching a topic regarding a marginalized group, heuristics like "mainstream" show their failure points. "Mainstream" is effectively asking for the opinion of non-marginalized people on the marginalized. This doesn't mean it's necessarily biased, but it has the tendency to be more biased.
However, there's an easy fix. The obvious correction to the heuristic is to in turn ask the marginalized group their opinion. In this case, that would mean asking one or more transwoman their opinion on the topic.
I never heard of this person before today, and just checked her Wikipedia page[1] to see what the "goofy opinions" are.
Maybe the page is incomplete, but they don't seem all that "goofy"? What exactly a "woman" is is subject to quite a lot of disagreement, and I don't think there is an "easy" answer here. I think it's important this debate is being held, and this kind of "bruh huh goofy opinions" dismissive attitude is exactly what the author is complaining about.
I don't typically question a person's motivation for asking questions! But the "great trans bathroom debate" has blown up far out of proportion, and its such a weird topic to wade into unprompted, that I have a hard time ascribing anything but bad intentions to anyone who does.
People have weird opinions all the time. I'm sure I have many myself. The difference is that she's an influential author with a wide reach who can reasonably be expected to think just a little more before she voices an opinion on something that affects a marginalized community.
You are tone policing. How do you know she didn't "think just a little bit more"? You assert that she didn't think enough because you don't like what she had to say.
Ascribing bad intentions off the bat to someone who wanders into a topic "unprompted" (how do you know? Do you talk to her daily?) is a poisonous attitude. Why are you the judge here? And the trans issue is not a "weird topic." It is highly topical. Many are talking and thinking about it. That just bothers you, apparently.
You're right! I didn't like what she had to say because the thing she said was transphobic.
The "trans issue" itself is not a weird topic. But there are certain ideas that seem to have taken hold ("the MASSIVE risk of fentanyl candy", "the HUGE threat of trans women using the bathroom", etc) that are objectively weird and, in the grand scheme of things, non-issues. For a regular person off the street, I might ascribe having an idea like that to ignorance. For people like Rowling, Adichie, etc I can only attribute it to bad intentions.
So no person of prominence could hold such an opinion and still have good intentions? That's a pattern that I find rather disturbing. "We're so clearly right that anyone who disagrees is obviously either ignorant or evil!" No, you aren't actually that clearly right.
And when I say "no, you aren't that clearly right", I don't just mean you, great_tankard, on the subject of trans issues. I mean just about everybody who ever says that, or even feels that.
I don't see anything about "the great trans bathroom debate"? It seems extremely reductionists and dismissive to boil it down to that.
> The difference is that she's an influential author with a wide reach who can reasonably be expected to think just a little more before she voices an opinion on something that affects a marginalized community.
So basically it's fine for people to have any opinion they want, except if they actually have an audience? That is literally self-censorship.
"Affects a marginalized community" is one of those things that gets thrown around left and right, but it's not at all clear to me that people really are really all that affected by someone saying "saying 'trans' and 'cis' acknowledges that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition". This is something you can disagree with, but I don't see how it really "affects" or "harms" anyone. You make it sound like she said something horrible, but this really isn't that, and it's also something a large number of people – probably a majority, including on the left – would agree with. Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33379058
The alternative is to unquestionably accept any argument from the marginalized people, and that doesn't strike me as a good idea. We accepted MLK's arguments based on the merit of his arguments, but also rejected various arguments from the Nation of Islam and other more radical groups.
> In an interview on Britain’s Channel 4 News, Adichie said: “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.”
> She said that while trans women face tremendous oppression and must be supported, we should also be able to acknowledge real differences between transgender women and women who are not transgender, without suggesting that one experience is more important or valid than the other.
These are the "goofy opinions" in question. You can judge for yourself if this is transphobic or not.
To be fair, this isn’t the sort of argument you’d want to make with any historical knowledge.
At some point in history, a lot of extremely bad opinions went from “almost everyone” to “vast majority” to an ever shrinking minority. Just to name a few:
- black people are inferior
- women are inferior
- gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry
- Native Americans are savages
- Depression/anxiety should be stigmatized
Each of these opinions followed a predictable but long path where more exposure to better opinions eventually won out. I’m unaware of any progressive opinion on egalitarianism that has failed to become mainstream given a long enough time horizon.
I don’t see any reason why this current “debate” will turn out any differently.
Extrapolating from a trend that has held in the West for a double-digit number of years to the entirety of the future of humanity is probably an extreme form of availability bias.
A trend that has lasted decades? Try at least centuries.
Egalitarianism and tolerance is a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking. Constitutions gave power to the people over kings. Capitalism gave individuals a chance to rival the power of vassals who were determined by a caste system.
I’d argue it’s a trend that’s gone on much longer, but progress was much slower when access to information and ideas was not the same as the last century.
It’s not to say there aren’t setbacks, but those setbacks have always been temporary or localized.
Now can something completely prevent this progress? Yeah, but it leads to very dystopian futures that everyone should hope to avoid.
Well, it’s sorta helpful to better understand your mindset. Of course you don’t see any connection between the Enlightenment and trans rights.
It would suck to realize one’s ideological underpinnings are the same as those that have been on the losing side for centuries and are almost universally recognized as the “bad guys” now.
It is really cute to believe your beliefs will win out in the next decades. Again another great attempt at humor, bravo!
I disagree with the author. There might be some self-censorship but the epidemic is actual censorship. As the article says, some people call it cancel culture but it has become obvious it's more insidious.
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.
There is both self-censorship and literal censorship.
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.
Good for society yes. It helps others feel more comfortable about expressing their own views when they see others doing it. Probably not that good for me personally but hey, Elon's doing it too.
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.
> 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?
It's a social credit score for companies and startups. It doesn't actually help the environment at all. It's bullshit to create new "carbon markets" and causes companies to work against the interests of their shareholders and customers in order to meet completely arbitrary guidelines in order to get high ESG ratings (to draw in investors).
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.
It's become a new wedge issue for Republicans, alongside trans rights, CRT, and the generic "woke left".
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?
If you want to find truth, you have to post your unfiltered thoughts, or ideally speaking them to a friend or a group.
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.
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.