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Yeah, Trump isn't what's killing free speech.
Trump is a symptom, not the cause: conservatism is the real problem here. I keep saying this, but as long as we keep allowing conservatives to reach positions of power, shit like this – and worse – will keep happening.
Let's have a talk about social media platform censorship. Tiktok and YouTube members who self censor common words like death or rape in legitimate conversations about the topics are learning to temper their language or face consequences. Unimportant consequences.
It may seem small by comparison, but if you condition it at a low level, each step beyond is easy to swallow. Spread it out over an entire population, and you see huge results.
You just described Newspeak (Nineteen Eighty-Four novel):
Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit a person's ability for critical thinking. The Newspeak language thus limits the person's ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will,[1][2] which are thoughtcrimes, acts of personal independence that contradict the ideological orthodoxy of Ingsoc collectivism.[3][4]
It's a lot more banal, though. Youtube has to sell advertising, and advertisers don't want to be next to discussions of rape or suicide. These restrictions are enforced algorithmically, hence the self-censorship. And in any case, it doesn't achieve the objective of newspeak, as those concepts are still being discussed.
And in any case, it doesn't achieve the objective of newspeak, as those concepts are still being discussed.
Yet.
But I get what you are saying. I just find the similarities, although banal, kind of funny. In a scary kind of way.
I don't think it's right to divorce the censorship from the result just because the justification is different.
What I mean is that even though that conditioning is taking place for a banal reason it's still true that it's conditioning and will affect the acceptance of moves like this debate fact checking decision that are serious and do have consequences. So therefore it still matters and is still dangerous.
I did pick up what Orwell was putting down. It's definitely helped shaped my view of the world.
Newspeak was an intentional in-universe conlang designed and handed down by Ingsoc based on "how you speak affects how you think" (which is a hypothesis that has... some kind of name). This is a bunch of people trivially avoiding automated filtering like it's been done since the first puritan implemented the first world filter.
One of the main differences is that self-censoring seggs and raep and ahh-es or whatever still leaves it plenty obvious what you mean, it just outs you as a Tiktok user. Conceptually word filters are a blacklist whereas Newspeak was intended to be a whitelist with the restrictiveness that entails.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity, just in case that was bothering you.
Is this why I see totally unnecessary self censorship for words like “r*cism”? Even here on Lemmy. I assume some of this originated on Twitter, where people abuse the reporting system as a form of retaliation.
Yes. It's so absurd.
Trump is both a symptom, of some deeper underlying issues, and a cause, of feed-forwarding those same issues - e.g. amplifying their power and their spread beyond what they would have done without his help.
Many people thought that Ron Desantis would take Trump's place - that speaks to Trump being a mere symptom. However, Ron had no chance to win the the overall presidential election - that speaks to how crucial Trump is specifically to it, in its current form I mean.
The Alt Right Playbook, by Innuendo Studios, describes conservatism so much better than I ever could though.
Agreee. CBS is not afraid of Trump. CBS is afraid of his army of rabid zombies who will flood their telephone lines emails and faxes and mailrooms with violent harrassment.
The brown shirts (or red MAGA caps in this case) are the real danger.