Censorship seems to be a forgotten issue in the modern day - almost as if the topic itself has been censored. I'm not talking about the black bar or the annoying bleep censorship. I'm talking about the deliberate and atrocious act of withholding information from the public, and often subverting truth with lies. Often, we don't like to think that it happens. We don't want to believe it does. But it does, and it happens everywhere, all the time.
Contrary to popular belief, censorship is not an action limited to governments. Individuals and groups of any kind can censor information, and historically this is quite true. Just recently, a widely followed and popular YouTube channel, Prager University (Not a real university) was the subject of Google's politically biased censorship. Many of their videos were blocked in YouTube's "Restricted Mode", for seemingly no apparent reason. Their channel talks about political issues and keeps their content clean and safe for general audiences. But, they have a conservative bias, which is what is suspected to be the reason behind their channel's censorship. Prager University tried for months to reach out to Google and resolve the issue. Not once were they ever in contact with a real person, just bots. It took a lawsuite for Google to issue a response. It said the following. "YouTube is an open platform and, to make it a great place for users, creators and advertisers, we provide different choices and settings. Restricted Mode is an optional feature used by a small subset of users to filter out videos that may include sensitive or mature content. Giving viewers the choice to opt in to a more restricted experience is not censorship. In fact, this is exactly the type of tool that Congress has encouraged online services to provide for parents and others interested in a more family-friendly experience online." But Google failed to explain why it was just targetting conservative videos, and more importantly, why restricted mode needs to exist in the first place.
The fact remains that restricted mode targets content with a conservative bias. The fact remains that in many settings, especially educational settings, restricted mode is NOT optional. The fact remains that Google is aware of this and has done nothing about it. Therefore, the fact remains that this is deliberate and egregious censorship.
The argument has been made that Google can do what they want because they're a private company. But Google has become a monopoly. Some might say that there are other sites on the internet where people can share their ideas, and while that is true, it is not a valid excuse for Google's actions. Google does not just offer a platform to share content; it is the size of the Sun compared to the size of the Moon. Google may not have a monopoly on platforms, but they have a monopoly on viewership, and they are now encouraging their viewers to become the judge and jury of content. With the introduction of theYouTube Heros program, users can mass flag and mass delete videos, without even watching them, talking to Google staff, or talking to the content creator.
If Google is allowed to censor peoples' content, then they are imposing their own law on the public domain. The public is the domain of the people. If we as people of the world allow this to continue, then we reaffirm Google's claim to ownership of all people. We, as a collective, must make ourselves heard and make Google listen to this message: "Don't be evil."
But the problem of censorship does not end with Google. Many people choose to censor themselves. People are afraid of controversy. People are afraid of dissent. People are afraid of making their private thoughts public. Political correctness is but one of the new ideologies that encourages silence in order to avoid potentially offending people.
After President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated, the CIA marked many of the investigation files as classified. Even after President Trump announced that all of the documents would be released in full, many documents had information redacted, blacked out, or simply cut off. Take this portion of an interview with the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Plans, Richard Helms.
The image source can be found here, from actual government archives. This particular image raises questions on the assassination of the President, but that is not the point. The point is that the government is still withholding information. Does the public not have a right to know what happened? Did the public not vote the President into office? This is but one example of the government withholding information from the people. In 1970, Richard Nixon ordered the press to not print anymore of the Pentagon Papers, although the order was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
In more recent years, that decision by the Supreme Court has been largely ignored. "The Press" as it has been known up until now was just the newspaper or the television news channels. But with the inception of the internet came a wave of enlightenment the amplitude of which no historical trend or event had ever come close to matching. The ongoing battle for the internet and the threat of internet censorship will be the topic of my next post.
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