[Official] Censorship from governmental actors thread

Canadian book burning incident

Book burning at Ontario francophone schools as 'gesture of reconciliation' denounced
More than 4,700 books were removed from library shelves at 30 schools, and they have since been destroyed or are in the process of being recycled

https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...chools-as-gesture-of-reconciliation-denounced

commentary:

https://theweek.com/politics/1004690/canadian-book-church-burnings

 

New York Considers Legislation to Curtail Free Speech in the Name of Democracy

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/12/...curtail-free-speech-in-the-name-of-democracy/

excerpt:

The great civil libertarian Justice Louis Brandeis once warned that “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” New York State Democrat Senator Brad Holyman is one of those “men of zeal.” With the approaching anniversary of the Jan. 6th riots, he has proposed a new law that would legislate an even greater level of censorship to prevent the “social media amplification” of views that are deemed harmful or “disinformation.” It is only the latest example of our “whatever it takes” politics.

Under S.7568, there would be criminal liability for anyone who makes “a false statement of fact or fraudulent medical theory that is likely to endanger the safety or health of the public.”

If this language is chilling for anyone who values free speech, Hoylman’s defense will freeze you to the bone. It is a censorship measure introduced on “the anniversary of the notorious January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and as vaccine hesitancy continues to fuel the Omicron variant.” It is a mix of algorithmic conspiracy theory and anti-free speech doublespeak:

“Social media algorithms are specially programmed to spread disinformation and hate speech at the expense of the public good. The prioritization of this type of content has real life costs to public health and safety. So when social media push anti-vaccine falsehoods and help domestic terrorists plan a riot at the U.S. Capitol, they must be held accountable. Our new legislation will force social media companies to be held accountable for the dangers they promote.”

For years, social companies have claimed protection from any legal consequences of their actions relating to content on their websites by hiding behind Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Social media websites are no longer simply a host for their users’ content, however. Many social media companies employ complex algorithms designed to put the most controversial and provocative content in front of users as much as possible. These algorithms drive engagement with their platform, keep users hooked, and increase profits. Social media companies employing these algorithms are not an impassive forum for the exchange of ideas; they are active participants in the conversation.”​

The rationale is perfectly Orwellian. It treats the failure to censor as being a participant in “disinformation.”
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more at the link

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It's Dangerous to Allow Politicians and Officials to Decide What Constitutes 'Truth'
"Governments realize that they are in an existential battle over who controls information."

https://reason.com/2022/01/10/its-d...d-officials-to-decide-what-constitutes-truth/

excerpt:

It's no secret that governments worldwide are increasingly hostile to scrutiny of their conduct. But, at a moment when too many media outlets see their role as working with the state to reinforce official narratives, one advocate of press freedom reminds us that the struggle isn't over the "disinformation" and "misinformation" called out by opportunistic politicians, it's over control of information. Will people be free in the future to decide for themselves what's truth and what's BS? Or will we be spoon-fed whatever the powers-that-be endorse?

"Governments realize that they are in an existential battle over who controls information, who controls the narrative, and they are waging a frontal assault against independent journalism around the world," Joel Simon, the exiting head of the Committee to Protects Journalists (CPJ), told CNN's Brian Stelter.

"This is the information age, and we are in a kind of millennial battle over who controls information," he added. "Who controls it? That's the power struggle. And so, governments recognize—repressive governments, but even democratic governments—that this is an essential tool that they need to maintain power and journalists are their adversaries."

***
Despite robust First Amendment protections for free speech rights, the U.S. is not immune to powerful people's desire to control information.

"We're going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can't just spew disinformation and misinformation," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) insisted last year.

In July, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called on social media companies to act as government proxies by removing what the administration flags as "narratives dangerous to public health."

Interestingly, CPJ's Joel Simon predicted the pandemic would empower efforts to control information.

"[W]e must be mindful that when we get to the other side of the pandemic, we may be left with a narrative, being written by China, that government control over information was essential to combating the crisis," he warned in March 2020. "That would be a devastating blow to the global information system, one that could endure even as the memories of the terrible pandemic we are currently facing slowly fade."

Since then, he's been proven painfully prescient as politicians' concerns have morphed from fighting "extremism" to suppressing "disinformation" to a weird amalgam of the two, unified by the alleged need to control what the public says, reads, and shares.

That's not to say, by the way, that material tagged as extremism isn't extreme, or that posts called out as disinformation aren't false. To open a web browser is to encounter a wide world of bigotry, bogus concerns about vaccine safety, nonsensical charges about election integrity, and fact-free arguments over whether or not COVID-19 even exists. But bullshit isn't a recent invention.

Free societies recognize that it's a lot more dangerous to let government officials designate what constitutes capital-T Truth than it is to respect people's rights to decide for themselves. When officialdom makes the call, legitimate news outlets get called "fake," as former President Trump often smeared his critics, extremists get conflated with opponents of school policies, as the Justice Department did last fall, and claims that COVID-19 originated in a lab leak in China are suppressed as conspiracy theoriesbefore later earning respectful treatment.

Truthful information doesn't require a government seal of approval because government officials are as flawed and biased as anybody else. They're prone to declaring debates over for convenient reasons of their own even as new evidence emerges and disagreements remain unresolved not necessarily because of rejection of facts, but often over fundamental differences in values and preferences. Powerful figures are in no position to save us from bad information because they're a major source of the stuff themselves and, if allowed, can use force to impose their versions of reality on dissenters.

We really are in an existential battle over who controls information, just as Joel Simon warned. It's not a battle over what constitutes truth, which remains as hard as ever to determine. Instead, this battle over control of information is a struggle over our freedom to decide for ourselves without having other people's decisions crammed down our throats.
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more at the link

 

Washington's Governor Wants To Prevent Another January 6 with Unconstitutional Censorship
Jay Inslee says we should make it a crime for politicians to lie about election results. What could go wrong?

https://reason.com/2022/01/10/washi...r-january-6-with-unconstitutional-censorship/

excerpt:

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wants to make it a misdemeanor for politicians to lie about election results. Yes, of course this would violate the First Amendment.

To justify the idea, Inslee is invoking the anniversary of the riot at the U.S. Capitol. "January 6 is a reminder not only of the insurrection that happened one year ago, but that there is an ongoing coup attempt by candidates and elected officials to overturn our democracy. They are willing to do this by provoking violence, and today I proposed we do something about that," he wrote last week.

He does not indicate what this has to do with elections in Washington state, all the way on the other side of the country, which is the only place where his law would apply.

In August, five Republican legislators in Inslee's state held a rally encouraging the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. They cannot be punished for such speech, because the First Amendment protects such arguments—yes, even false arguments.

Inslee thinks he can get around these protections by targeting falsehoods that are spread "for the purpose of undermining the election process" and "likely to incite or cause lawlessness." The wording of the bill is not publicly available yet, but the governor seems sure that it will fit within the limits of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the 1969 Supreme Court case establishing that speech inciting lawless action is not protected.

But that precedent requires the threat of lawless action to be "imminent." Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, notes that this is not a minor threshold.

"If I'm standing outside a police station and yelling 'burn it down,'" that counts as calling for imminent lawless action, Volokh explains. "But just saying an election is a fraud and we should do about it isn't incitement." And to the extent that speech can incite imminent violence, Washington already has a law criminalizing it.
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more at the link

 

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

 

I think https://mediabiasfactcheck.com does a pretty good job rating and evaluating various media companies, I tend to use that site a lot. Very fair and I think pretty accurate assessments.

 

far too long to quote in its entirety, but worth a look. I had no idea this was going on.


Publisher Sues Elizabeth Warren For Attempts At Censoring Covid-19 Book

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/08/publisher-sues-elizabeth-warren-for-attempts-at-censoring-covid-19-book/