One nitpick: it's no minor matter to Ms. O'Brien that she be able to complete her big project, and the keep the tools for doing others in future.
My more important point is that is the common case: our own freedom is important morally, but materially we benefit most from other people's freedom. Web pioneer firms are actually good examples here: they were free to build technologies that are handy for you and me even though that exposed knowledge some people would have wanted stifled.
The value of "free hearing" as a consequence of "free speech" is just one case of this and I am happy enough if the newly coined term makes the situation clearer.
[Disclaimer: I work for Google, but am obviously speaking here only for myself and not the company. Nor do I know anything about what the company plans to do about this case.]
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - MT
Centralized (state and/or corporate) control over information is itself an incredible asset to bad actors. Goebbels et al..
But it gets even worse when you look at lobbyists paid by corporations.
In the long run, Google will have to be split up into smaller pieces. You can't control this evil - and greedy -corporation otherwise anymore.
ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program
Indeed, though you'll notice that ever since the gory coverage of Vietnam the mainstream media censors war to a much higher degree because they learned TV audiences find the true images of war to be unbearable. Public support for war drops sharply when they see the mangled dead bodies of their own soldiers while they eat their TV dinners.
"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
-Marshall McLuhan
Once upon a Time you could mostly trust the news but these days we have "no spin zones" which are in fact entirely spin. You can no longer sit back and consume news, to get the real facts requires a great deal of effort and attention which is exhausting.
Head to your local library and hit the archives. From yellow journalism to papers owned by political parties, bias and dishonesty has always been a problem.
Of course, data scientists have their political opinions as well. As do journalists deciding which data to publicize.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g
The period probably began with Lippmann's Public Opinion, though it was coverage of the Second World War that probably marked the start of the true peak. By 1980, something was already decidedly off.
I'm reading Robert McChesney who does a very good job of recapping the history in Communication Revolution.
Could we trust them or did we simply not have the means to fact check them and communicate the errors? Awful current affairs programs were around before the web and they were reporting some pretty dubious "facts" back then. Tabloids have been around for 100 years, maybe more.
Because of that, media was regulated differently. A more diverse body of media (pre-media for profit news and consolidation) as well as the fairness doctrine and a non-profit public service expectation were all strong norms and law in play.
Technical limits forced all of us, including the media, to take it more seriously.
Yes, we could trust them more than we could now, but also yes, we could not check so easily too.
Choosing what is important to include or what not to include is dangerous.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-potter-dont-be-so-fre...
In many cases it's not possible for all individuals to understand because it would very time consuming and one may not have the training to do so either. So we need the help of journalists and agencies to make sense of the world.
I agree that the availability of sources where it is reasonable, should be made to the public. But that is also not always possible, since it may, in some cases, expose the sources to danger.
A consequence of this is that since we rely on intermediaries to simplify information for us, we are vulnerable to malicious propaganda conveyed by agents disguising themselves as trusted authorities.
Robin Hanson calls it "free hearing"[1]. The branding could be improved but the argument is exactly right.
We shouldn't even hide behind commentary and journalism. The source bin Laden videos should be available for us to judge. Removing them is not an act against the terrorists but against the public.
[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/free-hearing-not-speec...