I'm just saying that we should use definitions correctly, and "censorship" doesn't work here.
It seems like the only things which might be why it isn't "censorship" would be because either we like it (or it is objectively good by some reasoning) (which would be a terrible definition of censorship), or because there are sufficiently many comparable other options.
So, it seems that either some censorship is good, or whether something is censorship depends on what the other options for publication are?
I guess that conclusion (that or statement) is reasonable?
Thoughts?
whoever downvoted this, that is entirely within your rights and all. I'm just a bit confused. This comment of mine seemed entirely inoffensive, so I'm not sure why it has been downvoted three times.
When I ended it with "Thoughts?" I meant to be inviting arguments against the line of reasoning that I proposed. I thought I was being fairly open minded about it.
If it is because I was allowing for the possibility of some censorship being good, know that I was not claiming that some censorship was good. I just was choosing to not immediately reject that possibility when looking for how best to define censorship. I was not arguing in favor of censorship.
I was hoping for a discussion to try to find reasons why some definitions of the word "censorship" would be better than others.
I really don't understand why my post would be sufficiently objectionable for 3 people to downvote it. I don't mean that they were incorrect to do so, their/your reasons could have been made perfect sense. I'm just saying that I don't understand what the reasons were, and I would appreciate understanding what they were or might have been (so, if you are only providing your best guess for why someone else might have, I would appreciate that also)
For example, if Chinese banks / communication companies / whatever refuse to do business with human rights groups, that's a bad thing even if the companies acted without being explicitly ordered to by the government.
And just because newspapers and TV stations are privately owned, doesn't mean it's a good thing if they all decide not to publish negative stories about Qatar/HSBC/whatever due to a profitable advertising deal. Such self-censorship, if it happened widely, would be deleterious to the independent checks and balances our democracy relies on.
Now, I agree with you that it's not censorship if Joe's Childrens Books declines to publish my manuscript "Best Of 4Chan Shock Images And Racist Jokes" - but I don't think it makes sense to ignore censorship by private companies all together, as sometimes such censorship can be deeply problematic.