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Comment by majormajor | Hacker News Reader

The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them.

Context is everything for this discussion, because if you truly don't want there to be such censorship, you have to be aware of the motivations of the people pushing for change at the top now.

Otherwise you just get them running the show again, and you've just rolled back the clock a few decades to a world with a more violent state and a more cheerleading media.

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That's an interesting thought that I don't think I've encountered before; I'll think about that.

Your argument that “context is everything” is exactly my point. It’s not. Context is something. If context was everything, then there is no point in writing anything, because words cannot be wielded to create new meaning. Their meaning will be imbued by their collectively interpreted context.

> The people who have spent decades trying to keep the airwaves "clean," "family friendly," "anti-communist," etc, are suddenly shocked that they don't get to set the rules anymore, and that they're on the wrong side of some of them.

Or, to frame it another way, the people who spent decades saying "We should be allowed to broadcast whatever we want, because we support equality and liberty", and "If you don't like what we broadcast then you can just avoid it", are now suddenly finding themselves drunk on the power that they have gained, and are abusing it in much the same way as the people they were complaining about before.

Bullshit.

Censorship by the right, and censorship by the left are not the only two exclusive options. Free exchange of ideas in a constructive and respectful fashion should be the ideal.

They aren't the only two options, but they're our actual history.

So be aware of that.

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