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Re:Ron Paul locked out of his Facebook page by hnlmorg on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:31AM (#25743907)
There's good censorship and bad censorship: eg not having inappropriate content broadcast on shows kids are likely to watch (good censorship) vs the government dictating how current affairs are reported in the news (bad censorship).

Ironically Twitter moderating their own platform is good censorship because it means they're able to operate independently from the government. The alternative is the government intervening and dictating what social platforms can and cannot publish...and that sounds a whole lot more shady than the complaint you're making.

Re:Ron Paul locked out of his Facebook page by capiki on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @04:06AM (#25744170)
Not having inappropriate content broadcast on shows kids are likely to watch is government-mandated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law
Re:Ron Paul locked out of his Facebook page by hnlmorg on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:00AM (#25744630)
Of course it is -- who else would it be?

Without wanting to get dragged into a parenting debate (those seldom go well on HN)...the problem we face is that adults should have the maturity to chose which content they consume where as children do need some degree of protection from some content. People will obviously disagree on exactly where that line should be drawn, which is fine, but few would argue that there shouldn't be a line in the first place.

The real crux of the distinction is that obscenity laws are about censoring artistic flourishes (nudity, graphic violence, bad language, etc) that many feel is unsuitable for children, rather than filtering news content that is subjectively deemed as "wrong" due to a political bias. If the US (or any other government for that matter) abused obscenity laws to filter content aimed at children to an extent that then pushes a political bias (for example) then such a censorship would shift from a "good thing" to a "bad thing".