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My take on censorship, Google, and freedom of speech.

The image that finally prompted me to talk about this publicly.

Recently I've seen a buzz around the Internet about censorship and what that means for those who love freedom and those who value someone else's control. I found an image that prompted me to give my take on censorship.


Those on the right and the left battle on and on about many things, and some of these battles are insignificant when one looks at the big picture. Currently Google controls many people's access to the Internet, and this could be both a good thing and a bad thing depending on who is manning the controls. Having a central source for all correct information is incredibly convenient but it means a few things will inevitably happen:

1. One entity literally controls the basically all of the population's collective thoughts by controlling the information available. USSR, Nazi Germany, and North Korea are famous negative examples of this practice.
2. Having one location with all needed information encourages people to be intellectually lazy and only rely on a certain party to tell them all of the "truth" they need.
3. Competing information outlets have a really hard time bringing their ideas to the market place because everyone would rather go to their familiar source.
4. Diversity of thought will lower as everyone will all think with the same information.
5. Since no one on Earth is omniscient, therefore no computer system can ever have all the information on Earth.
6. Since corporations are only as good as the people behind them and the majority of people are mainly motivated by money, there is no way to guarantee that an information monopoly will always see benevolent actions as beneficial to their wallets.
7. What one sees as benevolent, another may see as censorship. This disagreement can be a problem if only one person or entity controls the access to information.

Google is user friendly and very well integrated with our usage patterns. I personally don't mind if a company knows some demographic data from my usage patterns, but I have a problem when the collected data can identify or help identify an individual, and now Google has data on almost all of us that can be traced to us. In some cases this can be a good thing like when an employer finds your work and profile online and tracks you down to offer a job, but it also means that the same data is available to anyone smart enough to find it. This would be fine if the person who is tracked was in control of what was shown to everyone, but this is not the case. Even this would not be a problem if the data was simply stored by Google and never used to track you but sadly this is also not the case. Google and other companies like them are actively tracking all users and they can identify thing about you that most would find creepy. The only good thing I have to say about google is that they are honest about tracking users while other companies are dishonest and get exposed like Facebook was with the data leaks.

Before someone says something about censoring violent or graphic images and other media from children I will draw a line between censorship of opinions and keeping vulnerable people from seeing extremely graphic media. I don't see blocking a pornographic website on a school network from the students as illegitimate censorship, nor do I see trigger warnings about graphic content such as: coarse language, nudity, violence, cruelty, and drug related content as illegitimate censorship. I support some trigger warnings provided they are given without political bias and are not misleading, I want to be given a warning before watching a television show that may contain objectionable content especially if there is a fair likelihood of having children in the room so I may decide to choose a different show on my own given knowledge of the content. The easiest way to discern proper trigger warnings from censorship is choice, if there is viewer choice then no censorship is taking place but if someone wishes to stop or hinder a viewer than it crosses into censorship. If the warning is legitimate, not related to political opinion, and the viewer has the final say on whether or not the content is served to them then I have support for the warning. I support some censorship in the case of certain illegal activities, I never, ever, under any circumstances, ever (Have I said enough evers?) want anyone to easily find material inciting immediate violence, abuse of any kind towards children or adults, or anything that furthers the cause of terrorists. I would also be against content that could lead to violence but predictive justice is not easily made accurate and I believe in innocence until proven guilty so I cannot with good consciousness stop anyone from material that I think might cause some thoughts I don't want further down the line because that is really hard to prove and I don't want any big actions to happen without hard proof.

Some say keeping bad ideas away from good people will keep more good in the world. In theory this sounds reasonable but in practice this falls apart fast. No human or company is perfect and all knowing, therefore no one has the ability or the right to "play God" and tinker with free will, not even my most valued heroes or myself should have that power, no one. Imagine one day you were arrested and sentenced to prison because in 35 days from now you would commit a felony, you haven't even thought of the crime you are accused of being destined to commit yet and there is no data on your future motive or weather you were forced in some way to commit the crime for someone else. This is a little like what is happening with censorship on politics, someone has decided that an idea is so false or is destined to end badly that it should be banished into the abyss. Does this sound fair? Only when it is you doing the censoring does it sound fair, as soon as the tables turn the former censors now start whining about how unfair it is that they are silenced.

"What should I do to stop X from being spread then since I can't silence it?" This is the beauty of free speech. Let's say a person is spreading a false idea which I shall call "X", I can do more to stop the spread of this X if I prove it wrong and speak with my own ability to speak freely then if I had shouted the spreader of X down. By silencing X I say to people that my idea is so bad that I need to shut down X to make you believe it, like a champion that cheated to win it shows that I cannot survive in a fair environment. By proving X wrong I convey the message that X was in fact a bad idea and my idea was able to stop it on a level playing field without help from state wide censorship. If you think something is wrong then it's your responsibility to question it. Question every idea, even if you think it's true. We may still think the Earth is flat and the center of the universe if people had not questioned and tested the accepted belief.


"To what extent should we censor the biggest information outlet since the printing press?" Is the question we should all ask every time someone wants to shut someone down. I don't want to give a platform to those inciting immediate violence (subtle inciting of later violence is a tad harder to detect reliably), but I also don't think anyone should be censored - even if I disagree with them - as that leaves them with violence as their only option left to be heard, a situation I hope everyone wishes to avoid.

I forget where I heard this, so someone inform me if you know: "Those who make peaceful discourse impossible make violent revolution inevitable."

This thought rings true lots, once you take someones voice you don't shut them down so much as you anger and fuel their disagreement until it turns into something actually dangerous. Often times bad ideas are only possible when good ones are censored, and with enough debate and though most if not all bad ideas will cease to be sensible. If your idea can't be challenged then maybe it's not the most true.I believe in this so much that I actively seek out non Christians to debate and discuss religion with, if my idea - in this case my faith - can't stand up to scrutiny then it's probably not true. The most dangerous thing to a lie is the piercing light of truth, and the most dangerous thing to a bad idea is a good idea and a level playing field to challenge both ideas.

Censorship will backfire, potentially making violent enemies out of those silenced even if they are naturally peaceful otherwise. I stand for freedom of speech, especially if you and I disagree. If you disagree with something, question it, don't shut it down. This is why I believe small government is a good thing as it allows people to think and act on their own, but now the world is changing and government is no longer the biggest force, companies like Google are now large enough to become functioning governments on their own. Corporatism and authoritarianism are very much related, and it's important we avoid both so we can still think of Google as our friend. When someone wants to censor someone, ask them what they would feel and do if that person censored them, morality and logic should go both ways. If it's wrong for someone to steal my wallet then it's no less wrong for to steal theirs, and if it's wrong for someone to shut me down for a thought I have or say then it's equally wrong to censor them.

Let's grow up as a species, out of this childish phase. Let's grow to the point we can truly call ourselves free, independent thinking, and civilized, wild animals silence the subordinates and fight off threats to their dominance but we have the power to choose a better life where no one needs to be kept subordinate and everyone is valued higher than priceless gems. Let's build a world where we don't have to worry about dangerous ideas like Nazi propaganda because it will never survive the truth and scrutiny of the others in our society, a world where we are not valued by the money in our pockets, the color of our skin, our gender/sex, or the opinions we generate but by our willingness to better ourselves given the change and our willingness to help others better themselves. A world where there is enough to go around not because the rich are taxed heavily but because we create enough wealth to keep every willing worker above poverty, a world where after work a billionaire and a young adult with little earning power can both sit at the same bar, joking, playing some games, and other recreational activities as if their wage gap was never an issue.

Imagine a world where wage gaps are the result of only a few things: willingness to work, skill, and usefulness to one's fellow citizen. A world where the poor are not seen as victims and the rich are not seen as oppressors and thieves not due to ignorance but because the everyone is free to pursue their own goals in life even if they fail or are not profitable. I don't want to ever be seen as a victim because I'm poor and have X opinion and Y physical traits, or seen as an oppressor because I am rich and have X opinion and Y physical traits. I want a world where the poor are seen by society and themselves as temporarily embarrassed rich folk, a world where class is not an issue and nationalism is used as to keep us focused on creating a world that everyone who wants to better themselves can be a part of.

With our modern conveniences and technology there is no reason why this world I imagine cannot exist. We have cured diseases, made food cheaper to produce, but yet we still think no better than a wild animal, just stepping on anyone who would threaten our power. We fight a pointless class war over money that was for most in the higher middle class hard earned while the alpha with enough money to prop up and the drop an entire nation into poverty at will.

Many have said throughout history that a house divided against itself cannot stand, we are deeply divided in the West and we could be headed for a world where our experiment in free-ish markets and democracy will be destroyed and lost forever to be replaced by theocracy and totalitarianism. The conservatives are not your enemy, the republicans are not your enemy, we right now are the biggest threat to our freedom by allowing bullies to dictate what we can and cannot think and do for their own profit and nothing else. Don't be a fool divided against yourself or your allies. Instead be the person you want everyone else to become, always look at how to better yourself, stand for truth, and protect the freedom soldiers went to war for in WWII, grant the same freedom you value to others and the rest of society will change as their minds to. If you want to change the world, start with some backyard changes, change yourself so you can lead by example.