> For fear of losing a job, or of losing an admission to school, or of losing the right to live in the country of your birth, or merely of social ostracism, many of today's best minds in so-called free, democratic states have stopped trying to say what they think and feel and have fallen silent.<p>There are a lot of topics I won’t touch any more, more every year. Accounts - can’t stay anonymous, ml systems working around the clock to identify posters. My social justice focused friends have it worse, their online “friends” attack them publicly over every single little thing. They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. They have panic attacks over the guilt and stress
I very often type out comments on HN and then delete them. As Snowden alludes to, everything we submit to public forums is logged and stored. There is no doubt in my mind these comments are easily associated to my real identity with very little effort.<p>Another side of censorship I consider often is signal to noise. There is no reason to prevent people from saying whatever they want if no one will ever see it. I recall a stat I heard that YouTube receives ~400 hours of content uploaded every minute to their site. Or the long-tail of Twitch streamers with 0 viewers.<p>Finally, there is a threat of violence. We all know what happens to high-profile journalists because of their high profile. I often wonder how many nobodies disappear for some string of comments on some no-traffic forums/blogs.
This is possibly a unique angle, but by being in taboo art circles (erotic art specifically), I'm struck at how much I see this topic resonating with my fellow artists.<p>I know so many, <i>too</i> many, far more than I can count on my hands who have simply given up posting kink art because they keep getting mobbed, doxxed, slandered, and harassed simply by posting art (or seeing their friends getting shredded as well). I know so many that have forced to bounce from platform to platform from instagram to tumblr to twitter because either the algorithm censors you or the mob abuses the "report user" button if they simply don't care for your art.<p>I know so many who have had to host on friend's servers because big-name hosts ban erotic art and kinks in tiny print in the TOS and it's just not worth it to fucking bounce from host to host unless if it's an actual friend who supports true artistic freedom.<p>I know so many who are winding up in making zines as a last resort, because zines can be printed at the home computer, so they're one of the last truly uncensored artistic mediums in comparison to the internet. And yet - how many trailblazing artists have we lost from that crushing top-down censorship even with that one meager avenue open?<p>So yes, this is relevant and urgent, and in more ways than it appears.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion on this thread, but this is just a convenient distraction while republican state houses and Secretaries of State across the country erode our real voice - access to the ballot box.<p>Republicans are suing Twitter to unmask fake cows that post unflattering things about them because, feelings? Death threats and plans to kidnap elected officials? A goddamn noose erected on the steps of the capitol amid the first incursion on that building in something like 200 years? And I’m supposed to empathize?<p>The whole thing is a mess. Nobody talks to each other. There was another thread I came across - don’t forget where I found it - but people who had put some tough guy face online suddenly weren’t so aggressive once they were face to face.<p>There is a lot of division but there is common ground to find. It’s hard when the right paints you as literal child eating demons and the left says you are a racist xenophobic asshole, but damnit we need to come together - what’s the alternative????<p>When there are topics we should truly come together on - enfranchisement comes to mind - we are too busy infighting that we lose sight of the real goal. And that’s how democracies die.
When I think back to the me of my teenage years or early twenties, I recognize that I had many strong beliefs that were probably wrong. I think that modern requirements of self-censorship have at least one really valuable outcome. They force people (with jobs, reputations, etc) to think carefully before posting online. I suspect that many people may be like me - they are hesitant to click "add comment" not out of fear of having a mob come after them, but rather because (a) they have realized that their own current opinions may be wrong, and recognize that there is harm that comes from an abundance of wrong opinions or (b) the cost in time of careful self-editing is too high. Maybe the author of this piece would argue that this is a bad thing, but my impression is that it's almost universally the case that if you can't be careful in speaking/writing there will usually be less harm from silence than from blurting out whatever comes to mind immediately.
What about the self-censorship of our neo-cortex telling us not to insult other people? Is that bad too?<p>Expression, and respectful expression, is a very nuanced and complex topic. This dramatic post presents the far end of the spectrum where every word can lead one to be fired. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
"Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter" are not moral highgrounds for free speech - they're engagement-driven platforms that thrive on drama and conflict.<p>Posting on these platforms is not real human communication.<p>If you can't calm down and remove yourself from an online argument before posting something that is almost guaranteed to be misunderstood, you're not evading self-censorship, you're feeding an addiction.<p>I'm probably doing it right now.
I think we need to let go of the idea that offending people is harmful. It's fine to take offense, we are all free to do that, but I don't think there should be any expectation that people do anything to avoid offending you other than practicing basic civility. You are likely not harmed just because I believe something different from you. Frankly, if you feel like you need a safe space to hide from ideas that you disagree with, the world is too sharp for you to handle.
The question is who is the mob. I fear the crazies much more who stormed the capital and tried to overthrow our democracy than some online SJWs who are going to try and cancel someone for having an unpopular opinion.<p>Not that either are great, for instance I didn't find Damore's opinions outlandish although expressed poorly.
Snowden's publisher was sued and prevented from paying him for the work. What's the deal with the paid subscription option then? Will substack end up just pocketing the money, or is there some legal workaround? For that matter, could the government try and go after any paying subscribers?
The most dangerous censorship is the one that is happening to you.<p>We used to have a policy literally called "Don't Tell" in the US. People who "told" (or were outed) were fired... assuming they weren't killed for it, by somebody who would claim that they "panicked" (a defense still legal in 38 states[1]). That wasn't the most dangerous censorship.<p>Women are commonly told that if they wear the wrong thing, then they deserve to be raped. Clothes are a form of self-expression -- but shutting that up isn't the most dangerous censorship.<p>A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist was denied tenure because one donor didn't like what she said. But that's not the most dangerous censorship.<p>We all watched a videotaped murder last year, and when the police were sent in to beat up peaceful protesters -- including journalists -- that wasn't the most dangerous censorship.<p>A lot of censorship goes on, and has gone on. As far as I can tell, this one rises to the level of "most dangerous censorship" because he thinks it's the one that's happening to him. I hear not a peep about any of the others.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/virginia-becomes-12th-state-ban-gay-trans-panic-defense-n1262933" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/virginia-becomes-12t...</a>
In one sense, I'd argue that the feeling of censorship is misguided. People are more free to communicate now with a larger audience than ever before in history. Before if you had something controversial to say, unless you were an extremely well-known academic or politician, it didn't get any further than your barstool or bridge club. Now your thoughts can be instantly transmitted to an audience of literally millions. Ideas are being hyper-amplified, not hyper-suppressed.<p>However, it comes with a catch. In pre-Internet days, when your verbal blurts potentially reached dozens, you felt fairly free and unimpeded to reach the limits of your communication bubble, tiny as it was. Even if you were roundly condemned, the area of effect was likely small and the duration transitory. Now that your verbal blurts can reach millions, so many more people can take issue with your words, and they remain part of your dreaded "permanent record" forever. Consequently the stakes have become much higher. Speech doesn't feel free and unimpeded, even though in practice structural impediments have been greatly reduced.<p>It seems to me unfortunately that the lowering of structural impediments to communication ineluctably goes hand in hand with the raising of social impediments. People are becoming cautious because we simply can't take for granted that any speech we generate will stay safely within its intended audience. Private emails can be dredged up years later. Screenshots can be taken without our knowledge. Phones can record videos of us saying and doing things we thought were personal and confidential. Information just wanted to be free, and got its wish, but it's turned people into prisoners in a panopticon. My point being, these are two sides of the same coin. Blaming "Marxism" or "cancel culture" and the like isn't going to change that fact.
This is why I delete all my old tweets, posts and comments on all sites with a passing link to my actual profile.<p>Nothing good has ever become of people's old tweets popping up years later. Ever.<p>I think HN has the longest history of my comments, just because it's not possible to delete or anonymize comments without creating a bunch of throwaway accounts.
Powerful comment on how we cancel ourselves, before we let others do it to us<p>--<p>Just observing today my favourited and most impactful (to me) articles on HN were all flagged<p>Why do we do this to ourselves?
Even if censorship / canceling / doxing were out of the picture, there is still another source of danger: The combination of surveillance and persistence.<p>I often cringe when I read things I wrote several years ago. I have evolved, my views have changed. Had I posted that somewhere on the Internet it would be out there “forever”. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that someone (or worse, some shitty “AI”) would be able to pick that up years later and mis-interpret it into biased conclusions, with real-world consequences.<p>The Internet has become a huge Petri dish for social dynamics, power struggles, and human psychology. I'm sure we have only just scratched the surface of what effects that will have on society and individuals.
As usual Snowden, America’s Freedom Laureate in exile, gets right to the heart of things. I do worry that his laser focus on the philosophy of things —and concomitant lack of specific (contemporary) detail/examples— will result in readers simply affirming their own dogmas rather than searching themselves for complicity. I hold out hope that, in the aggregate, the deeply subversive undercurrent of his writing pulls those dogmas under and drowns them to death.
As a general, open question:<p>How do we distinguish self-censorship (justifiably bad connotations and all) from "Choosing to not say things that would piss people off for no gain?"<p>The latter just seems like prudent behavior when one lives in a society, because one's words have material impact on other people's mental state. Unmeasured words wide-cast can easily do more harm than good.
Ironically, when I finished reading this article, I found myself skeptical to subscribe to Snowden's mailing list when presented with a prompt to do so at the bottom of the article. I didn't want to be put on some list. Aware of this after the article, I'm subscribing anyway. :)
slight tangent, but as a teenager we had to read a Danilo Kis book: "Early Sorrows" ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Sorrows" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Sorrows</a> ), that was quite a jolt.
Here's a good and poignant clip about "mail snooping" from Little Murders (1971): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16InStip5k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16InStip5k</a>
"I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything."<p>- David St. Hubbins
Today's reality in the US is one where <snip> ... <snip> ... <snip> ... <snip> ... <snip> ... <snip>.<p>Yeah. No comment.
This is pretty rich. I'd argue the worst kind of censorship is getting murdered/disappeared by a totalitarian government for speaking out against them. Kind of like what happens to critics of Putin, Snowden's current patron. But hey, I guess getting some mean tweets directed at you is pretty bad too.<p>Anyone appreciate the irony that Snowden's posts are probably monitored/vetted by the KGB?
I wonder how Snowden reconciles his position on self-censorship with his current country of residence. Is it meta, in the sense that he too has to self-censor out of fear for own life? Does he consider it a necessary move, presuming any country with stronger freedom of speech is also a country that would extradite him to the US?
> Self-censorship means reading your own text with the eyes of another person, a situation where you become your own judge, stricter and more suspicious than anyone else.<p>That's how many people write novels!<p>All humor aside, Snowden has once again managed to convince me that he is one of the most articulate--yet horror-inducing--thinkers of our age. The fact that, were he to talk to a podcast, the discussion's transcript would be close to pure text quality is what I love about the guy.<p>BTW Freud goes pretty deep on the matter of internalized surveillance in his book 'Civilization & its Discontents', written in 1929. It's supposedly one of the mechanisms that keep society functioning: you don't need cops if citizens are copping themselves.
Why I carry weapons for defensive purposes but speak facts and reality even if other may wish to impugn or murder me for it. Tribal ideologies are intellectual dishonesty cults incarnate. Saying you're a "D," "R," "communist," etc. puts your mind and your positions in a camp to defend. Why not weigh each issue, policy, and scenario standing-alone with consistent common-sense?<p>If you don't have a weapon, others with weapons with different beliefs can and will eventually silence you permanently. This is what happens in Mexico to reporters and civil society activists. They don't carry guns and so they make themselves easy targets to eliminate.
The pattern of evidence to date is that Ed Snowden is a traitor working for Russian foreign intelligence and now fled to exile in Russia, living there only under Putin's protection. He's been a key part of their effort to smear and undermine the US and their alliance partners for many years. He has no honor or moral authority or credibility.
We can't say the truth/opinion about certain topics because it will offend certain people and the mob will exert its power to take something from you by threatening you or an employer.<p>Could it be considered blackmail to get someone fired from their job for outing something they said to an employer?
What happened to the concept of being proud of your beliefs and ensuring they align with the lifestyle you lead?<p>The nebulous fear so many have seems rooted either in not thinking through the problem of so-called "cancel culture", or in people thinking they shouldn't suffer the consequences of their decisions.
Cancel culture can go to far. But tolerance of intolerance is also a problem.<p>The US has a dark & dirty history and it seems the reason this has become a subject of debate again is because a certain element of people seem to want to pretend none of that ever happened, or worse, that it did but has no effect on our society today.
Sorry, I respectfully disagree.
Censorship is someone else preventing you from saying something you want to say. Self censorship (as something you want to say but do not because of fear of the consequences) is not a thing, simply because you cannot distinguish between the want to utter and the want not to utter and which is eventually winning in your head and the fact that you did or did not utter something. It is a process we call thinking. We choose our words or the absence of them and that makes them worth while.<p>There is also no opposite to self-censorship: I want to be able to say everything I want without consequence. You say something because you want it to have and audience and thus consequences. Saying you want the consequences, just not the negative ones is saying you want everyone to confirm you are right. Well join the other 7 billion.<p>The idea of self-censorship is also not innocent because you are robbing people of agency. You actually deny them to choose their own words. The idea of self-censorship requires an external party to declare someone wanted to say something, but he or she is self-censoring, That implies that you know what they think and the absence or presence of words gets filled in with whatever that third party thinks that person wanted to say.