Bombay Begums

1 comment on Hacker News

1. Negativesquare_usualMar 12, 2021

   > Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.

   This doesn't work if every platform - whether they have market power or not - are compelled to censor by mobs. Most recently, Glenn Greenwald wrote about journalists trying to get Substack to censor its authors [1]. Well before, Signal employees tried to make their company have an anti-extremism policy [2].

   The fact of the matter is, most people don't know enough about censorship to fight against it, and so small groups of dedicated people can create enough of an uproar in their circles about something to make it untenable for any major platform to speak about it, simply because those platforms now have to contend with a vocal minority pushing a narrative. This has been a very common tactic in India, where I'm from: interest groups will object to a movie or a book loudly enough to de-facto, and even sometimes, de-jure censor it. Most recently, a Netflix series lead to a controversy as it dared to show teenagers doing drugs. This lead to Netflix being notified buy the Indian equivalent of the CPS, and was directly caused by people complaining about the show on Twitter. [3]

   There is a pardadox of tolerance with respect to free speech. We cannot expect to maintain freedom of expression if we treat everyone who actually expresses themselves as a sinner.

   1: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-start-demanding-substack

   2: https://www.theverge.com/22249391/signal-app-abuse-messaging-employees-violence-misinformation

   3: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/mar/11/netflix-gets-notice-from-top-child-rights-body-for-wrongful-depiction-of-kids-in-bombay-begum-2275353.html