Good Censorship - Let's Ban The Bad People!

I'm sure there will be no issues whatsoever with the selection.

So you guys know we love riddles here, right? Here’s a new one for you. 

If someone offers you the power to take away the voice of one specific group of people FOREVER, on all media - do you do it? 

So you could silence the Nazi sympathizers, or Andrew Tate fans, or the TERFs, or the anti-abortion activists…. the racists… anyone you feel is doing the most harm. You just declare they have no more right to speak, and every comment they write immediately vanishes into the ether as they type.

Got your answer? You picked yes or no? This is not a rhetorical exercise, we’re committing.

Ok, if you picked yes - one person from the group you chose to silence was given the same choice as you. So they will also get to permanently extinguish the conversation on one subject, whichever irks them the most. It’s only fair, right? 

So… are you standing by your choice?

I really wanna know, you can tell me in the comments.

You see, censorship seems extremely alluring when it’s us doing the censoring. It seems pretty self-evident that certain people should just not be allowed to spew their hateful and harmful rhetoric, particularly when we know it leads to real people - usually vulnerable minorities - getting hurt. 

Saying what Israel is doing is wrong goes against community guidelines.

So how come in all of human history we don’t seem to have ever managed to wield it for good? 

I mean it’s always possible we did and I just don’t know about it. Again, do let me know below. But from every single example I can think of from the segment of world history I am familiar with, censorship has invariably led to doubleplusnogood things happening.

I don’t like to get overly meta about things, but Substack is a massive Idea Exchange, and in that sense it’s pretty normal that occasionally we will have conversations on the rules of that exchange. Recently that conversation seems to be spinning around a number of texts by women saying that they, and other women they know, have been victims of incels and misogynists, and their anger because their appeals to have the offending attacking materials removed from Substack have fallen on deaf ears. 

Now am I sure that every woman and queer person on here at some point encounters a misogynist? Oh absolutely. All you have to do is have an opinion but not a penis, and a wild misogynist appears. They are quite easily summoned. But am I in agreement that they should be banned from the platform and their texts forcibly expunged? 

No. 

Mentioning data analysis regarding media bias on the issue of Palestine goes against community guidelines.

Now clearly in verbal communication there must be basic rules. Anyone practicing hate speech or inciting violence or threatening or doing any such untoward thing should of course be sanctioned. But the issue comes when we want to expand these powers of banishment to people who are merely unpleasant, or rude, or in…. impolite disagreement? …with our position. People who are Being Mean to Us. 

In the relatively brief time I’ve been here I’ve had a few people shout-typing somewhat unhinged things at me. It’s unpleasant, I’ll avow. It makes me uncomfortable. 

But what makes me more uncomfortable is the idea of regulating our Idea Exchange through censorship. ‘But Lidija!’ I hear you insist. ‘We would only censor the BAD people!!’ I do of course get that this is the premise. But how will we determine who the sufficiently bad people are? ‘Well we’re good, so we will definitely know!! If they are demeaning or disparaging us……’ Mm ok. What if we want to demean or disparage them? ‘Oh we would NEVER!!! We only write the most polite and gentle things.’ Mm. What if they happen to feel disparaged anyway, since that’s a pretty subjective standard? ‘Well who gives a fuck about how they feel! We are morally in the right so we make the rules!’ 

Annnnd there it is. 

Just as Galadriel would not have been a better wielder of the One Ring than Sauron was, so also are leftists no better wielders of censorship than the right wing is. You think you won’t abuse power because you lean to the left? Have you heard of Stalin? Know what a gulag is? We socialists invented censorship, bitches! When we cancel you, you stay canceled.

Expressing admiration for journalists and rescue crews goes against community guidelines.

In Yugoslavia before the wars, while Tito was still around, we probably had the best version of socialism on offer. The country was prosperous, the official narrative was ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ between the six republics and two provinces, cultural diversity, young people coming together to rebuild their country, happiness prosperity state issued apartments holidays by the sea blah blah life was pretty good.

But there was also OZNA. 

OZNA (Odeljenje za zaštitu naroda - The Department for Citizens’ Protection’) was essentially the FBI of old Yugoslavia. And they - knew - everything. There was a popular expression - ‘OZNA sve dozna’ - ‘OZNA always finds out’. And if OZNA found out that you were philosophically critical of the state, or - god forbid - of our dear Leader…. you’d get disappeared. There was a special prison for political dissidents on a small island in the Adriatic, near the coast of Croatia. It was called Goli Otok - Barren Island, because there was nothing there except the dank, intimidating prison building and a lifetime supply of rock for you to break in your free time. Which you would have a lot of.

The number of people who suffered this fate certainly couldn’t compare to the Russian gulags, but it was still thousands of people. Some came back, others didn’t - the record says around 300 died during the 7 years it was officially open. Today you can go do sightseeing tours, it’s cool if you like creepy things, just watch out for small scorpions. 

Don’t forget this wasn’t a prison, there were no crime convicts there. Just people with The Wrong Opinion, who said it a little too loudly while chatting to a neighbor and then got disappeared during the night, Brazil-style. (The movie, not the country). 

That sounds weird and distant to you? I invite you to look into what England, Germany and France are doing right now with journalists who dare express pro-Palestinian views in their social media posts.

Googling news headlines goes against community guidelines.

So in general when we call for certain views to be punishable by some sort of excommunication, even if merely digital, we are creeping into that sort of territory. Let’s imagine for a moment how the system could even function. Would we have a massive army of checkers who would read through all the mountains of published content to flag up problematic texts? Of course not, even if it were feasible the cost would be astronomical. Any sort of ‘just’ arbitration would be near impossible. So what then, AI? This would inevitably lead to frustration, as AI is not great at determining nuance and intent. One time I wrote ‘OMG kill me’ under a random cheesy joke on Facebook and Facebook sent me a concerned note to ask whether I was considering suicide, and to assure me that help was available. 

‘Well let’s just do it by reporting!! We will report the offending texts!’ You exclaim happily, glad at the thought of helping to purify the atmosphere of your favorite writing app. But… what if it’s you who ends up getting reported instead?

‘Me?’ You ask incredulously while clutching at your neck, as your tasteful thin silver necklace suddenly seems to be somehow constricting your airflow. ‘Why would anyone ever report ME?!? I am just sharing my thoughts and experiences!’ 

First off, different people are offended by different things. Or as someone once nicely put it, ‘Have you noticed when you’re driving on the highway, how everyone going faster than you is a maniac, and everyone going slower than you is an idiot?’ We tend to believe ourselves to be at the center of all the Correct Views, which is pretty normal, as we wouldn’t hold them if we did not think them correct. But the problem is everyone else feels the same way. Even when they’re maniacs, or idiots.

Secondly, and more crucially perhaps - if there’s one thing the Other Side knows how to do, it’s to organize for nefarious purposes. Who do you think would be quicker to scrounge up a bot army to hate-bomb your own carefully crafted takedowns of patriarchy and misogyny? You know they would have us fighting mass reports and account suspensions left and right. 

Metaphors go against community guidelines.

In the first months of The Abject Horror that is the situation in Palestine, I was pretty active on Instagram. There was still much confusion about fake news vs real news, Biden was confidently blathering on about beheaded babies, people were getting fired left and right for saying such frightening anti-Semitic things as ‘Free Palestine’ or ‘Don’t Bomb Children, Maybe?’ It was a pretty bizarre time. Anyway if you have been around here for at least a few texts you probably have a sense of how I write. I refrain from personal insults, I am seldom rude, and I mostly try to lay out my views in a logically structured way. 

Instagram did NOT agree with my self assessment at all. 

Instagram had decided that I was a very volatile element who must be stopped at any cost. At first they started blocking my comments about Palestine. Then they just started blocking my comments about whatever. I’m including a bunch here so you can see what sort of vile and depraved person you have been unwittingly following these last few months. Clearly I was unhinged and dangerous. 

When blocking individual posts didn’t seem to teach me a lesson, Instagram realized something more must be done for the safety of the netizens with delicate sensibilities. So five different times it just randomly blocked me from posting or commenting for a full week. Once it was two weeks in a row - the first post I made upon being released landed me right back in comment jail. I was a recidivist, you see. Incorrigible.

It was then that I realized how simple it was to delete a person in today’s digital society. All it took was for someone to decide that my comments were somehow, by some undefinable and unquestionable metric, inappropriate, and I could be removed from the global conversation. If you take away our social media accounts, how will we make our views known? How should we talk to the world? Should we send pigeons? Amateur radio? Blinking in Morse code?

Sharing fundraising resources goes against community guidelines.

Paradoxically, this doesn’t work nearly as effectively for the other side. Ignoring the fact that absolutely no one seems to be even trying to censor the Nazi sympathizers, fat-shamers, racists, genocide enthusiasts and woman haters, even if they did it would be virtually no use. They’re all shacked up behind whole wasp nests of interlinked fake private accounts, with names like BigDick24975 or whatever, no profile photo, two posts one reel and 563 followers, all probably spoofed from the same laptop in their ratty basement. You can’t touch them. However many accounts you suspend, there’s always more where that came from. They don’t care about continuity, because all they’re doing is shitposting anyway.

But take someone who has their own name on their profile, who has spent years building an audience, carefully crafting a library of posts over time…. Someone trying to promote their art? We legitimately have something to be afraid of when our accounts are threatened. And even if they don’t formally block us, there’s always the shadowban. 

Just today a friend of mine who is extremely active in the pro-Palestine Instagram community had posted a video about a campaign to get power back to the pediatric ward of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of Gaza (if you wanna donate with me, his Instagram name is @yousaama, link is in his bio but you can also go directly from here) 

He has around 100,000 followers, he was partnering up with other people who also have very solid numbers, the potential audience for the video was over 930,000 people in total. and yet 18 hours after posting the video was shown to less than 2% of that number.

You tell me what that is. Censorship? Silencing? Sabotage? 

They’re trying to fund solar panels for a children’s hospital. 

I don’t think we are sufficiently conceiving how sinister that is. That the world’s largest communication provider is willfully sabotaging a people’s initiative to gather funds for solar panels to power the pediatric wing of a half-destroyed hospital in a war zone. 

Expressing sympathy for both sides goes against community guidelines.

So I am actually extremely grateful that Substack is so far refusing to play Thought Police, if indeed they are. I hope they stick to their guns. Yes, some people write shitty things, yes some people might copy a part of your article to parody it and tell you they think you’re wrong, yes people will have takes that will irritate you, provoke you, disturb you or infuriate you. The block button is your friend. 

It’s not ideal, but still better than a visit from Thinkpol.