Re:PayPal ends business dealings with Alex Jones's Infowars
by rossdavidh on Friday September 21, 2018 @07:51PM
(#18043541)
Well it's not censorship if you define censorship as government actions. But, it is pretty chilling to think that you can get your business shut down for political reasons. In the immediate post-9/11 atmosphere, anybody suggesting that the Patriot Act was not a good idea got a lot of negative feedback. I recall putting anti-war signs in my yard during the early years of the Iraq war and getting them torn down. But, back then, I wouldn't have had the risk of getting driven out of business because of my politics. Banks are private companies too, as are car companies. I wouldn't want them to be able to keep me from opening a bank account or buying a car, not matter how reprehensible my politics might be.
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Re:PayPal ends business dealings with Alex Jones's Infowars
by wavefarer on Friday September 21, 2018 @08:13PM
(#18043669)
That is the definition of censorship - the government is the only entity that can legally hold a gun to your head to stop you from doing something.
Re:PayPal ends business dealings with Alex Jones's Infowars
by DuskStar on Saturday September 22, 2018 @01:02AM
(#18044541)
No, it's not... Otherwise 'government censorship' would be redundant. I just checked the top 5 google results for "censorship definition" [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] and NONE of them limited it to government only. I mean, the first sentence of the Wikipedia article even mentions corporate censorship specifically: "...as determined by a government or private institution, for example, corporate censorship."
0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship 1: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship 3: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/censorship 4: https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship