> I think it is immoral for some business executive to make sweeping decisions about what the commoners are / aren't allowed to see
I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated.
The U.S. is already going in the direction of a dystopia if you haven't noticed.
More free speech isn't going to help gas, housing, or educational prices, but it does enable various actors at little to no cost to themselves to freely shit out emotional, illogical, and invective dreck on various platforms and prevent honest analysis and discussion from happening on numerous issues. If all of this is a guaranteed benefit to society it's getting harder and harder to see to lately.
I think the young people growing up today, who cannot afford a place to live, who have to go into years of debt just to get started, who are being looked down by previous generations for not starting a family when they literally don't have the resources to do it, are going to look at things vastly differently and really care less about this sort of thing from a hard absolute perspective.
> I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated.
I am watching a lot of historic documentaries. I studied history (and literature) originally. I read a lot of historic sources and accounts.
This argument, that the powerful and educated need to protect the dumb masses by censoring what they are allowed to know/read isn't new. It is used by the powerful way before the medieval age but was (just to name an example) used by the catholic church against the translation of the Bible. It was used by western governments during the cold War. It is still used by the British government with their ability to silence editorial boards on specific topics. It was used by the US against Wikileaks. It was used by the GDR against their own people who also were officially banned from watching western TV/listen to western radio. It was used by western Germsn media when they decided to not publish the RAF terrorists' letters where they declared their reasoning for bombs or killings.
I don't buy it in historic context and I don't buy it today.
It's not about protecting the dumb masses, it's about protecting the non-dumb from the dumb. Any ideology, set of rules, etc. can be abused to the extent where its harmful, so that's not the point. I'm not sure I want a government to be making those types of decisions, but I have no problem if a private platform does.
You had clearly already decided that all of these societal ills where either caused by bad information being processed by “the uneducated” or would be worsened by it. So this comment says more about how you view the uneducated than it says about the merits and demerits of censorship.
I'm ok with this as long as I get to be the gatekeeper. Otherwise I would prefer we look at principles instead of consequences. Let's stand by our principles even if it dooms us.
I used to have this point of view, but it's clear lately that certain types of information do not result in good outcomes if processed by the uneducated.
The U.S. is already going in the direction of a dystopia if you haven't noticed. More free speech isn't going to help gas, housing, or educational prices, but it does enable various actors at little to no cost to themselves to freely shit out emotional, illogical, and invective dreck on various platforms and prevent honest analysis and discussion from happening on numerous issues. If all of this is a guaranteed benefit to society it's getting harder and harder to see to lately.
I think the young people growing up today, who cannot afford a place to live, who have to go into years of debt just to get started, who are being looked down by previous generations for not starting a family when they literally don't have the resources to do it, are going to look at things vastly differently and really care less about this sort of thing from a hard absolute perspective.