I get that censorship in major tech platforms is problematic, but the sense of martyrdom in comments like yours feels a little overwrought.
Yeah, sure you can be banned for questioning if an untransitioned man wearing a wig is really a women, but this isn't what most people are concerned about. The censorship has now gone far further and in many cases to simply disagree with mainstream narrative on some politically charged subject will be enough to have you removed. One of my favour YouTubers "Mouthy Buddha" was banned for making some videos about Epstein and paedophilia -- the guy produced "conspiracy" content but it's really high quality stuff with no hate at all.
I mean even the US president was banned for "violence" despite asking rioters to go home, being acquitted and the FBI finding that there was no coordinated insurrection plan.
I'm not coming at this from any political position. A lot of content social media platforms censor I don't like, but that doesn't mean I think it should be censored. Things like racism have been deliberately defined in a very loose way that practically anything can now be considered racist and used as an excuse to censor. A popular comedian in the UK got banned during the world cup for saying, "all I'm saying is, the white guys scored". He was mocking how the UK media had been running stories for weeks about how the "diversity" of the England team is what made them great, but that wasn't allowed because "racism".
Saying that after your previous paragraphs doesn't erase the political content of that previous paragraphs.
I'm definitely in favour of free-speech, I'm just not particularly left or right wing in my political views or voting habits.
> Yeah, sure you can be banned for questioning if an untransitioned man wearing a wig is really a women, but this isn't what most people are concerned about.
> the guy produced "conspiracy" content but it's really high quality stuff with no hate at all.
> I'm not coming at this from any political position.
can you hear yourself?
You mean, they aren't allowed to spread absolute blatant lies and falsehoods, that have already caused at least one deadly riot, in an attempt to overthrow a fair and legitimate election that just happened to not be convenient for their personal agenda? Good.
> This last year we had a UK media organisation banned from YouTube for questioning the UK COVID response.
I'm not from the UK and haven't kept up with news about the UK, so I can't really comment on this one. But out of curiosity I looked it up. If we're talking about the same instance, one of Rupert Murdoch's radio shows was banned for content that YouTube flagged as contradicting the World Health Organization's guidance on COVID. That content was then soon reinstated. That is notably different than saying you are not allowed to "question" the UK government's response to COVID. YouTube misidentifying content on their platform is well documented and happens all the time outside of the context of politics. So again, YouTube's actions here were flawed, but far from the political censorship that you imply.
> People in the US are no longer allowed to question the legitimacy of their elections on most social media platforms.
This is blatantly false, and so easily disprovable. People on Twitter and Facebook constantly repeat falsehoods about election fraud. I just now Googled "youtube biden president illegitimate" and got several results back attacking the legitimacy of Biden's presidency. The funny thing is I only clicked one video because I want to avoid YouTube's recommendation engine thinking this is content I want to see. YT surfaces fringe ideas so readily. How do you think that stuff spread in the first place?
> Even US media outlets like the NYPost were censored for running stories Twitter didn't like during the US election.
Twitter bungled their response on this, and they backed down after they were rightly criticized. One tabloid getting banned from one social media platform is again, not at all close to certain topics not being allowed on major tech platforms. Content attacking Hunter Biden (the topic of the article that got the NYPost banned) happened before, during, and after the the ban. The NyPost is also back on Twitter.
The rest of your claims follow a similar pattern.
I again repeat my assertion that censorship in major tech platforms is flawed and problematic, but the narrative that certain view points are being choked out by tech platforms is simply not true. Fringe ideas have flourished in the age of social media, and would have not entered mainstream discourse if it weren't for the tech industry.
Sounds almost reasonable, except:
Putting a question mark after misinformation and conspiracy theories doesn't magically transform them into reasonable questions.
And pluralizing the word "elections", doesn't fool us into thinking this is about more than the 2020 presidential, and Donald Trump's lie that it was stolen.
It has been thoroughly litigated and found to be legitimate by both public and private entities. Anyone continuing to "question" it most likely has an agenda of undermining that legitimacy.
So if I was to try to get you killed on this forum but then my next post said "violence is bad though" would that make the first part go away?
Limiting speech means there are plenty of rational opinions we would otherwise miss, options, solutions. It reminds me of that NASA satellite caught throwing away useful data at the system level. If you start editing deeper and deeper eventually you start to throw out important solutions.
We need to keep the solution space as big as possible.
For example, try talking about a need for safe spaces for X, and you will immediately get abuse from random strangers complaining that you aren't thinking about Y.
Or try saying anything about treatment Z side effects. You'll be downvoted and insulted for not sufficiently trusting the science.
Some discussions just work better in a less open, moderated forum, where people will try to engage with you, rather than having an angry internet mob materialize out of thin air whenever their trigger topic is mentioned.
That's such a naive and ignorant viewpoint. Everything which one doesn't agree with suddenly doesn't become racist, xenophobic, and homophobic content.
Post from an hour ago:
> Somali feminist: Facebook is being used to silence me
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28452991
Another one from 2 months ago:
> The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645282
From yesterday:
> The Linux Experiments YouTube channel has been terminated
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28443244
Facebook and IG also banned the mother of one of the soldiers who died in Afghanistan last week.
Even women who are against biological men competing in their sports are getting silenced under the label of "transphobia."
One only get to understand what censorship feels like when it comes for them.
> One only get to understand what censorship feels like when it comes for them.
This looks like you were starting to write "First they came for the" and then realized the next word was "socialists".
https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-...
And now we've moved on to "misinformation" which has no real definition other than being mitigated by so-called fact checkers who mostly work for American for-profit newspapers.
More censorship = less content on social media, which is a good thing for humanity.
Plus, honestly non-anonymous discussion of controversial subjects might actually be worse. You still get maximally aggressive interpretation, but you actually know each other so you can lose real friends.
Discussing anything on the internet that makes anyone feel emotional is just a bad thing no matter how you do it. That's why I'm completely fine with censoring anyone with violent views I disagree with. Get them off the internet first, then maybe someday everyone else will get off too.
Also I'm aware I'm being a hypocrite right now just by responding here. I'm supposed to be working. Like I said, the internet is just bad and my hypocrisy is proof of it.
There are important conversations within the LGBT that would be really interesting, but asking questions that could be construed years later as homophobic, no matter now innocent can publicly destroy people.
I'd love to have a discussion breaking down certain ideologies, including the merits as well as demerits of certain controversial groups. But this could actually cross into criminal in the UK with the interpretation of some laws. And certainly come back to haunt me years later publicly.
On the flip side, we have the ability for systems to mine through words and sentence structure and identify commonalities. Perhaps there's like an "on screen keyboard" for conveying meaning without giving up your specific grammar patterns. This kind of editing is so costly for the human race :(
you need to be far gone to manage to get yourself kicked off Facebook.