Freedom.

I'll just leave this here.

"Since May 2014 Thailand has been ruled by a military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order, which has partially repealed the 2007 constitution, declared martial law and nationwide curfew, banned political gatherings, arrested and detained politicians and anti-coup activists, imposed internet censorship and taken control of the media."

Didn't call for censorship. I just find little benefit in singling out an individual with a very tiny platform for saying something dumb. The idea that her being singled out online to be inundated with death threats and vitriol for her and her family (her and her family were doxxed over this) seems to far outweigh the benefit of "stopping this woman going around the country"... seeing as how she's one woman with basically no following and little influence. I doubt she's done many of these talks at all or will do more. (Looked it up. This talk was the only one she'd given all year. Only one on a different subject the year before. Both locally in her area.)

Spreading videos like this after someone has already been doxxed and threatened only seem to help compound the injury. And it's not ideological to me. Justine Sacco said something stupid online and got a crazy amount of blowback and lost her job for it- I don't agree with that either.

If you want to call out what you view as racism, going after the little guys for saying something a little off isn't the way. Go after people with influence. Hell, a police chief in Oklahoma was just caught running a white supremacist website and record label. That guy has direct impact on the rest of people's lives and even if they get to keep their lives in some situations.

Ashleigh is an unemployed recent college grad. The most influence she has are the 15 or 20 people who were all adults that signed up for this particular seminar. I imagine they either agreed with or are old enough to make up their own mind on what was said.

"Too HOT! (hot hot)"

That is a sad bit of censorship.

YOUTUBE BEING SHUT DOWN IN 2017!? CENSORSHIP SPARKS MASSIVE OUTRAGE! Who Benefits?
https://youtu.be/QwLcjsVDcVs

They were all low quality. Alas, proper english also equals proper english lawyers quashing their intellectual property, except for the translated clips.

I have also found this to be true with subtitled music videos in proper english. If someone puts a massive Spanish subtitle on the video, it survives the english censorship and video removal.

English videos in non english formats survive. They are the fittest and therefore your proper english, following this path, will also die out and morph into INGSOC as long as the abomination of intellectual property law scourages our world.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I do miss Jon. What's the deal leaving in an anal sex reference but bleeping "bullshit"? Censorship rules on TV are really twisted.

He did totally fuck himself!




EDIT: Now disinvited from a conservative speaking engagement at CPAC....right wing censorship, they hate free speech and should have any funding they receive striped. ;-)

How's this?
Milo fired/resigned from Breitbart for his pro-Pedophilia statements...specifically when he said it was not abuse when he had sex at 13 with adults, not for his defining the word. I don't believe for a second that this was his decision alone. If, as he claims, this is only about haters bringing him down, why did they wait, and why is he giving them what they want of his own accord? He's not, he was disgustingly wrong, he knows it, he apologized for the first time in his life because of HIS interpretation of his own words, and goes on to pretend it didn't happen and is just a witch hunt.



Bye Felicia

EDIT: Now disinvited from a conservative speaking engagement at CPAC....right wing censorship, they hate free speech and should have any funding they receive striped. ;-)

The historical precedents being (self)censorship and gulags.

Subjective offense and harm defined by well-meaning panels of social judges are the road to hell.

Is the man really black enough to be allowed to say nigger? Is the woman really ugly or is she justly offended? Who decides? Or is there some other concept at work here? Like common morals decided upon by peers in normal social contact (conflict), instead of dictated by a "higher" entity, the SJW.

Let the people decide for themselves. The normal path is that legislation is formed based on morals, not the other way round.

@ChaosEngine

i have many:teachers,police,firefighters as facebook friends.

during the run up to the election i was posting a ton of my research,analysis and commentary in regards to the election.

this,on it's own,should not be surprising,what WAS surprising is all the support i received from these people and who were simply afraid to like,or comment.

they were literally sharing my work with other people via private messaging.

each and every one expressed to me a fairly robust paranoia that if they liked any of my posts,or commented,that they would receive disciplinary action and that their jobs would be in jeopardy.

i found this very troubling and what i could not,and STILL cannot reconcile,is how some people not only ignore this very subtle form of censorship,but find it a viable and understandable in the realms of social media.

when you restrict what a person can comment or speak on due to fear.this is censorship.

in the case of justine sacco,she was simply making a joke and when put in context..a really damn good one.but due to the self-righteous moralizing of total strangers,her life was destroyed.

now there will be some that may still find this justified,and that is fine,that is their right but what REALLY chills me is that nobody is addressing the much deeper and far more insidious nature of public shaming.basically:other people saw what happened to justine sacco and will modify their social media persona accordingly.

this,in my opinion,will only result in a vanilla goo like substance that offers no challenging ideas,no conflicting opinions that offer an opportunity to discuss and debate difficult subjects,because debate starts with disagreement,and if you impose a fear of retribution by simply posting any content that may be construed as controversial.then the conversation ends...
and we all pay a price for that kind of groupthink.

this will force the really bad and worst of us to go underground,and reside in an echo chamber where their fucked up ideas are parroted back to them,resulting in a confirmation that their worldviews are correct.

conversely...

those who may have good ideas,or wish to engage in controversial subjects,or in the case of justine sacco..make a fucking joke...will be relegated to the "good little worker bee" position.who never challenges power or authority and simply obeys...for fear of losing:financial security,public standing etc etc.

they become fucking stepford wives.

and in my sincere opinion,this is the real danger.

That's the point. Free speech can potentially be an act which causes harm to others.

I don't have the answer for this. When I was younger, I tended to be a free speech absolutist. My opinion was freedom of expression was absolute and that we just had to accept the consequences as a price to pay.

I no longer believe that.

As a general rule, I am opposed to censorship. People should be free to say what they want and others should be free to respond appropriately.

But it's naive to think that free speech is absolute. Nothing is. So we all have to be mature and accept the fact that (as distasteful as it is) some speech is not protected. At a bare minimum, we have things like libel and slander (which are important, but also open to abuse as well).

Back on the topic of hate speech.... it's a tricky one. For me, it comes down to how you define "hate speech", and there isn't really a widely accepted definition.

It ranges from nonsense like anti-blasphemy laws (victimless crime, IMO) to controversial things like holocaust denial (patently bullshit, but not actively harmful IMO) to reasonable provisions against incitement to violence (neo-nazis etc).

There's also the concept of "negative liberty". X has the right to free speech, but Y also has the right not to be threatened or intimidated in their daily life (note: they don't have the right not to be offended).

Again, I don't have all the answers. My point is simply that the world isn't black and white.

Ironically, I'm somewhat echoing the sentiments in the video, in that facing an uncomfortable truth requires you to think and that's not a bad thing. But my uncomfortable truth is that not all speech can be free.

Very interesting, but I have some questions about the efficacy of those rules/laws with regards to actually keeping the uncensored versions out of German hands.

Here in Thailand, since 2008 all GTA games are specifically banned (after a nutter who killed a taxi driver said he was influenced by GTA), along with any games with "excessive violence" or sexual content. In spite of that, the majority of male students in the High School where I teach have played GTA5 or other GTA games. There are no legit physical copies for sale in stores (I assume they are also removed from Steam for Thai users but I dunno), but like with all media here piracy is rampant and kids either torrent/download pirated copies of the games for themselves or buy a pirated copy of the game on DVD from vendors that can be found in markets in every city or village.

The rampant piracy also circumvents Thai censorship laws that require movies to blur out people smoking, drinking alcohol, or nudity / sexual content. Legit copies (which are rare) adhere to the rules, but most people end up with pirated copies that are more often than not sourced from uncensored versions and therefore don't follow the local rules.

Pretty weird situation. Makes me wonder if now in the internet age many German consumers might have no moral qualms with buying legit German-censored versions of things and then downloading pirated / cracked versions from the internet that circumvent the censorship.

Your video, South Park - Language and Censorship, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The most reasonable counterargument to this I've heard (and I'm not saying they're right, just eminently reasonable) was made yesterday by my favorite Canadian Let's Players:

1. Youtube has always had this content policy. Everyone who signs into the monetization program has always accepted this code of content before joining the monetization program.

2. Youtube has had this content practice for a long time. These videos were demonetized long before this recent 'scandal'. The only thing that has changed is that YT is now letting content creators know which videos were never being monetized in the first place.

3. It's not so much a question of content as it is of tags. The vast majority of content processing is based on the original tags by the uploaders, and you can avoid demonetization easily by having fewer, less controversial tags (that will also limit your viewership).

Obviously Youtube has been opaque and shitty in communicating how and why they make changes. But censorship? I would have a hard time going back in time to Bolshevik dissidents and telling them that censorship in the future means that a corporation that broadcasts your opinion for free won't always force other corporations to also pay you for those opinions.

*Edit: Also, eric3579's already got this shit covered, I just hadn't followed his links yet.

Youtube: Blocking Revenue is Censorship has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine on that post.