This goes well beyond just censorship.

No, this is just censorship. The government showed up and told her to stop saying stuff, so she did. The problem is that the word has been diluted in contemporary usage. Almost everything that people call "censorship" in the discourse mostly amounts to "People disagree with me and I don't liek that", or occasionally "I got banned on <service A> so I'm yelling about it on <service B>".

This is what actual censorship looks like.

Censorship is not solely its most extreme form. Getting banned from your favorite baseball forum because you keep talking about hockey does in fact count, even if it's relatively minor and most people would even agree with it.

> Getting banned from your favorite baseball forum because you keep talking about hockey does in fact count, even if it's relatively minor and most people would even agree with it.

Fine. But then what word do you use for repressive coercion of speech by governments? I'm no linguistic purist. I get that words change their meanings over time.

What I was complaining about were people (1) using the word to imply terrible behavior on the part of some imagined enemy while (2) citing irrelevant nonsense evidence, as in your example. That's not a semantic argument, that's just lying.

"I got my wings clipped and they weren't gentle about it"

"I can leave but Kaidi can't"

"In fact, one of the latest turns is the Beijing LGBT Center's closure by the Chinese government in May of this year. "

And many other useful bits of information in the article.

Censorship is when you send a message from jail and someone elides stuff they don't want you to talk about. It doesn't involve goons visiting you, travel restrictions and wholesale restrictions on sizeable chunks of the population in terms of education or association.

You are wrong. Having a gun pointed at you isn't nonviolent just because the trigger wasn't pulled.

Threatening someone to make them censor themselves is a means of censorship.

I said 'it goes beyond censorship', that means that censorship is a part of it but that it goes well beyond that point.

Here is the dictionary definition: "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."

If we follow your logic then killing someone or jailing or intimidating them is censorship. But the bar for what is censorship is much lower than that. So if the bar for censorship is met by just targeting the media (for instance: youtube, to tell them to pull the account and not to let her back in) then that would be censorship and it wouldn't require threats of harm or restrictions on movement. That's active and possibly violent intimidation. Xi's government gets a free pass from the West because (1) we like the goodies and (2) he's not as bad as some of his predecessors. But meanwhile he's a thug and his government is acting in very thuggish ways to achieve their goals and the casualness with which censorship escalates into other forms of abuse is telling.

More telling is how apparently a fragment of the HN audience insists they see nothing more than the control of information. Trust me on this: if your internet connection is severed and/or your online writings are officially erased that's bad enough, having goons come to your house, threaten you and threaten your significant other that's another level altogether.

Censorship doesn't require guns, does not require goons and in general doesn't have a prerequisite of violence. But threats of harm, or being sent to a 'reeducation camp' (I hate that term) especially in a country where people tend to just disappear aim to influence not just your writings and your media expression but your general behavior and serve to cow an individual completely, apparently successful. So censorship is only a sub-goal, and a minor one at that. This is all about behavior and coercion, hence the travel restrictions and targeting of groups of individuals.

Rethink your take. Censorship is when the government prevents you from saying or publishing what you want. The government's ability to do that ultimately stems from the threat of force/violence.

China's ways of doing this might seem crude to somebody in the US or EU, but boil down to the same thing.

If you continue to disobey either of those government's orders to stop doing something, they will send men with guns to pick you up and lock you in a cage, literally preventing you from traveling anywhere.

That's why censorship is a terrible thing in a purportedly free society, and discussions like this are why mis-application of the word "censorship" to mean things like "waaaah walmart.com refused to broadcast my tweet about how trans people should be beaten up" is also bad.

Agreed that private entities not posting your tweets is not censorship.

But I will stick to my guns that there is much more at stake for people in China that don't behave in the way the government wants them to than just being censored. 'to stop doing something' is doing the heavy lifting in your comment and what the 'something' is can be limited to media expressions and then I would agree it is censorship. But this goes much further than that: it is not just what you write. It is also how you behave, and about what your ancestry is, which activities you are allowed to engage in (and which activities you have to engage in).

Censorship is just about expression. This is full-on coercion, anti-LGBT policy and racism. To make it explicit.

OK, I see what you are saying, and agree.

The set of injustices perpetrated by the Chinese government includes far more than just censorship.

You should read the Wikipedia article on what censorship is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

"Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions and other controlling bodies."

No, censorship can totally be the answer to getting people to stop saying things you don’t want them to say if you don’t have any commitment to free speech. See how Tucker Max or Milo Yiannopolous are no longer culturally relevant. Censorship works.

I would argue it's more about eliminating bad faith actors from an otherwise healthy discussion. If you aren't arguing to make a point, just to get a reaction, you have no right to a platform.

If I can find it again there's a really great video explaining how, to have free speech, you must restrict some speech. Because bad actors use speech and claims om they are "defending free speech!" in bad faith as a weapon to further their ends, and once they're in a position of power will shameless drop the pretenses and restrict any speech that doesn't entrench their position.

Here's a video on the subject:

Debate and Deplatforming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFAYN6oWyIo

And it's sequel:

Why Deplatforming Works (And Why it Doesn't)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r5C-G0VrjI

Known as the paradox of tolerance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

If you stop treating it as a moral commandment and instead consider it a treaty which allows civilization to exist, it becomes obvious that it doesn't apply to those who won't remain bound by it. It's not a paradox.

Tolerance is for all points of view that will allow the discussion to continue.

I trace tolerance in general back to the religious tolerance introduced by the Peace of Westphalia, and the centuries of religious war that preceded it. It obviously goes much further back, but that's the archetypical example for me.

Seen in this light, tolerance is somewhere between symbiosis and mutually assured destruction, and much less wishy-washy than everyone thinks it is.

> If I can find it again there's a really great video explaining how, to have free speech, you must restrict some speech.

It's nonsense. Constitutional governments with checks and balances can and do hold up to criticisms against them, even speech advocating against free speech. The paradox doesn't exist because the premise of the paradox, that tolerance of the intolerant inevitably results in the victory of the intolerant, isn't true.

>The paradox doesn't exist because the premise of the paradox, that tolerance of the intolerant inevitably results in the victory of the intolerant, isn't true.

The paradox doesn't apply to actors operating in good faith who simply disagree, but those whose intolerance extends to authoritarianism and violence in oppressing the free speech of their opponents, such as the Nazi regime that insipired it, and its truth seems self-evident. You'll have to explain to me how greater tolerance of the Nazis would have resulted in a better outcome for anyone (besides the Nazis) than intolerance of them in order to disprove the premise.

In America it is legal to advocate for Nazism. This is legal and simultaneously a non-threat because our system of checks and balances prevents them from overthrowing the government. They are not denied their first amendment rights, and yet they're abject losers. The US government is simultaneously tolerant of them and not threatened by them.

The supposed paradox of intolerance says that silencing people who would silence you is the only way to prevent yourself from being silenced, but this is demonstrably not true.

We can see this so clearly on reddit.

They have eliminated 100% of conservative voices from the platform, as a result it's become a haven for leftist extremists who now openly and repeatedly advocate for moving 'beyond electoralism,' the meaning of which is well understood.

I mean, I've read people arguing for 'Swiss democracy' and 'American ballots' (because you also vote on a restricted set of laws when electing state representatives) when they talk about going 'beyond electoralism', which to me id super fair. Can you explain what do you think it means?

[delayed]

Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.

The 20th century alone is not short on case studies. Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.

> Again and again the empirical outcome of tolerating bad faith weaponized speech is the sharp reduction in the diversity of ideas and perspectives actually present in speech, by violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.

So the problem isn't 'tolerating bad faith weaponized speech' but rather tolerating 'violently silencing or eliminating those who hold other perspectives.'

The second does not follow on from the first.

Also, what is (and who defines) 'weaponized speech'?

Likewise, who defines 'bad faith'?

> Government policy ideals from a small handful of European men in the 18th century may be noble but I value more the documented modern observable effects of policies than their inspiration and goals.

The proof is in the pudding, the American system of political tolerance has an excellent track record and leads to better outcomes in the long run.

Given recent events in the US, this is clearly not the reality.

With all that has gone on, I think it is another example of how it works so well. Strife happens, what is key is dealing with it. And the us seems to be doing fine.

A version that might be harder to misunderstand would be that if the other side resorts to violence first there's not much reason to continue using only rhetoric.

Which even still isn't a hard rule, there's a few well known examples of remaining tolerant (not trying to prevent your opponents from speaking) in the face of intolerance (your opponents do try to prevent you from speaking) and succeeding rather well.

The 'paradox' of meeting violence with violence is the most mundane "I'm 14 and this is deep" shit. I'm pretty sure this is not what people are actually talking about when they talk when they bring up Poppler's "paradox". The "paradox" is used to persuade people that authoritarianism is okay when they do it because everybody thinks of themselves as the good guys. The whole point of tolerance is that you don't meet words with violence, not that you should be a pacifist who refuses to meet even violence with violence.

> not what people are actually talking about when they talk when they bring up Poppler's "paradox"

Yes, that's the point. The popular way of using it to justify starting violence yourself is not an accurate reading.

I don't know about Milo, but after looking at Wikipedia, it looks like Tucker grew up and so did his former audience.

Jury’s still out for a while, but Carlson’s being kicked out of Fox recently has been a big hit so far.

Latest book sold 3k copies: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/15/tucker-carlson...

Tucker Max, not Carlson. He was a pick up artist/bro influencer.

You are comparing getting fired for costing your network billions by lying about elections and smearing, without substance, a company with getting silenced for your sexuality Nice.