Censorship isn’t the right word here, I would say. Censorship would make sense if this were a government that was being spoken about but it’s not.
I’ll take it from the perspective of myself, I run a Lemmy instance that is open for people to register for (after a brief application question and confirming your email address). If someone registered, and wanted to post Nazi-adjacent content I would remove it and ban them right away.
I would not be “censoring” your ability to see it. I would be saying “I do not want to host this content on the hardware that I am paying for and maintain”. Sure, you could argue that the side effect is that you’re not able to see it, but my intent isn’t “censorship”. If you want to see red and pink diamonds (just a completely abstract example), but I did not want to host it, then as the person who’s paying for the hardware then my want will always come first. That isn’t to say that others aren’t free (including yourself) to host said red and pink diamonds.
Censorship as a term makes sense for the government, because they have the power to enforce that everyone under their ruling must not host red and pink diamonds. I alone do not. Now, maybe almost every single Lemmy instance also doesn’t want to host red and pink diamonds - that would still not be censorship, that would just be most instance admins happen to align the same and are executing the same rules for their own sites.
Of course, replace myself with a private business owner, and Lemmy instances with something like a News subscription website, the meaning should still be the same. Hopefully my stance makes sense, I’m not writing this with the intent of “You’re wrong and I’m right” in the direct sense, but as a “I disagree, and here’s why”.
I did see your conversation with the other person here, and I agree that government censorship is bad (such as the weird concept of having to upload your ID to view porn), but I just don’t view this in the same way I suppose.
Obviously, Substack is within their rights to allow red and pink diamonds if they want, but if they didn’t then that would not be censorship (in my eyes, at least).
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 months ago
The corporation already makes choices about your viewing. Unless it’s a completely unmoderated wiki, they make choices about what is allowed. There are presumably lines that substack (or anyone) are unwilling to cross. We can probably assume that they would not be okay with “livestream of grinding up babies and puppies and snorting them”.
If such a line exists, then I am saying nazi shit should be on the far side of the line.
If such a line does NOT exist, then I guess we’d have to have that discussion about why some things are unacceptable.
If the line is “only what is literally illegal” then that just punts editorial responsibility into a slower, less responsive system. It’s a cowardly shirking of responsibility.
As to how it relates:
That’s false. That’s not how you or anyone works. You are just as vulnerable to advertising as anyone else. And even if you were the platonic ideal of Strong Rational Man, many other people aren’t.
If we were talking about government censorship, which we were not, then that’s a slightly different conversation. The government has more power and is fundamentally different than a private blog platform or whatever.