Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
Are we redefining words now?
I mean there has always been illegal speech, we just don’t usually call it censorship.
“BAAAHHH!!! YOU’RE CENSORING MY HATE SPEECH, RACIST SLURS AND DEATH THREATS!!! WAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
That CANNOT be the arguement you stand behind.
I mean, we do that. Just say it’s good to censor bad things. There’s nothing wrong with that, so don’t lie about what you’re doing.
No one said it had to be platformed, but call a spade a spade
The argument is the dictionary.
Which one?
We’re always redefining words, that’s how language works. This isn’t even close to the most egregious within the last couple decades.
Language works when words have a common meaning between the speaker and the listener. When 2 parties have 2 different interpretations of the same word because 1 decided they were going to manipulate into meaning something different from the commonly understood one, language breaks down, and we get senseless arguments among people who otherwise agree outside of semantics.
So no, that’s not how language works.
Literally means figuratively now.
Yes, language changes, that is why you don’t rely solely on individual words to define your argument.
The reason people might argue despite agreeing outside semantics is that they never bothered to go beyond a very basic explanation of their argument. If your sole disagreement comes from a differing interpretation of a word… then do your best to define your argument better. Otherwise you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing.
Which is an excellent example of how stupid this is because this word has literally lost all meaning, thank you.
My argument is that manipulating definitions to suit an agenda is stupid nonsense.
Yeah, “purchasing” movies or shows comes to mind. When streaming services revoke access and never grant a way to download them, did you ever really purchase the movie or did you just rent it?
An excellent example of the negative impact of the manipulation of definitions.
It’s only censorship if it’s something I personally agree with.
It’s not a right to harass people, and you’re not entitled to others’ megaphones
I don’t disagree with you. But calling it anything other than what it is is disingenuous and misleading. Like when you buy a movie and it isn’t available to download and the streaming service takes away access, did you really purchase that movie or did you just rent it? Words have meaning is all I’m saying.
Words also have connotations.
Human rights violations aside The EFF and Techdirt have already said that it is hate speech and effectively suppresses the free speech of gay and trans. Do you know better than these sources? The latter is like the very person who states that anti-hate speech laws are First Amendment violations. He said it loud and clear: this is actual censorship of LGBT voices.
Is it not censorship to allow violent assholes to scare minorities into silence?
I’d say that censorship when enacted by governments is violence and there’s no smaller minority than the individual. That said, if the UN Rights Chief wants to censor certain things, he should just say it. Besides, I don’t put much faith in an org who puts Iran as the chair of the human rights council. Stances like this and the OP’s link are reasons why there’s a ground swelling in the US for withdrawing from the UN.
Censorship means that some higher authority wants some information not to be seen by certain people. The target of censorship is therefore the readers/listeners and not primarily the person writing/speaking. Hence if the readers/listeners don’t actually want to read/hear the hateful drivel that some person shouts into the void, removing it isn’t censorship but content curation.
And what if 50% of people want to read what you consider hateful drivel?
They can go somewhere else and talk to each other there.