Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

Then it's yours, because there are many documented cases of fatalities occurring as a result of the suppression of inconvenient facts.

> Says you.

Says the Union of Concerned Scientists.

https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy...

> You're running under the (faulty) assumption that such censorship would be unregulated. I also wouldn't support such a system, but thankfully that's not what I'd propose either.

It's impossible to actually regulate censorship because for regulations to be sound they have to be vigorously debated, but the public can't, by definition, debate whether something should be censored if nobody can talk about it because it's being censored.

> Yes, the actual harms of unrestricted censorship are widespread and well documented. But most of the EU censors things that are free to say in the US (antisemitism, as an example), and yet somehow manage to rate higher on independent ratings of press freedom[0].

In-spite-of, not because-of. And the US scores poorly largely because of this new radicalized censorship where crazy people are now committing acts of violence against journalists that publish stories they disagree with, and because of all the abuse of power (arresting journalists on charges that won't stick as retaliation for undesired coverage/investigating). Succumbing to populist censorial sentiment or creating new opportunities for more of that abuse obviously wouldn't help matters.

> No, the US just took a strong turn toward isolationism post WWI and the great depression.

Those were the reasons they didn't enter the war when it just seemed to be a war. Knowing what was actually happening could have overcome that sooner, or at a minimum spurred people to do more to facilitate the escape of Jews from the affected countries.

> The atrocities of the holocaust were not some perfectly kept secret.

Their full scope was not publicly known until near the end. We recently learned that the government knew earlier:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/holoc...

But even that was the year after the US entered the war.

> Immediately jumping to "the Nazis and Stalin censored people, so censorship is bad" isn't an argument

"The Nazis and Stalin censored people and they were bad so censorship is bad" is not an argument because it applies equally to building roads or using radios.

"The Nazis and Stalin censored people and as a direct result of the censorship more people died" is a cautionary tale and a strong indictment of censorship.

To begin, the atrocities of the "Holocaust" as its commonly referred to, as the large scale extermination of the Jews, didn't really begin until after the US entered the war. Before then, knowledge of the the general plight of Jews in Germany and Europe were pretty much common knowledge. So your claim that broader knowledge of the Holocaust might have caused the US to enter the war earlier has a flaw: There was, at the time, not yet a Holocaust for people to be aware of.

As for everything else, I'm actually perplexed by portions of your argument, because you seem to be arguing that the government should not censor people, and that populist censorship via speech is bad. It seems pretty clear to me that if the US outlawed threatening journalists, it would lead to an improvement in press freedom, and from your comments, it sounds like you would agree with this, since its a form of "radicalized censorship". But I think you would also argue that such a law was itself censorship and unethical. This is especially true since you conflate censorship and suppression.

Censorship is but one form of suppression. I can suppress an idea without censoring it by generating so much nonsense that an observer can't readily discern between fact and fiction. You clearly have an objection to the suppression of facts, and I would agree that that's not a good thing.

But where I disagree with you is that censorship necessitates the suppression of facts. In fact I think often, well "aimed" censorship can improve discourse and prevent the suppression of ideas.

>It's impossible to actually regulate censorship because for regulations to be sound they have to be vigorously debated, but the public can't, by definition, debate whether something should be censored if nobody can talk about it because it's being censored.

I do also want to call this out specifically. We are, right now, albeit by proxy, vigorously debating the right to support Naziism. Yet, I don't see any reason for an observer to believe that either you or I ourselves supports Naziism. Censoring "support of Nazis" does not necessitate censoring "support of the right to express support of Nazis".

I'm a huge fan of the work you did on Slashdot and Slashcode back in the day. It's still by far the best thought out moderation system I've seen.

I'd love to see a modern respin of Slashcode that reused and enhanced the moderation ideas. Unfortunately my spare time project slots are all consumed already :(