There has been much controversy lately about various attempts at censorship, using the term broadly to include efforts to revise, omit, or forbid various forms of expression. The efforts come from both the right and the left, although in different forms. If you follow the news, this is all familiar. The right, led by attack-dog Ron DeSantis, in the name of fighting “woke” behavior, is trying to take control of school systems and intimidate teachers, passing laws forbidding honest discussion of race and LBGTQ+ issues. The “woke” left have become language police, setting themselves up as arbiters of which terms are acceptable and which are “offensive.” Most recently, publishers have gotten into the game, published “revised” versions of books by famous writers, from Roald Dahl to Ian Fleming. Some of this is billed, as censorship so often is, as protecting the delicate minds of sensitive children. Some of it is not, unless there are parents out there reading James Bond to their kids for bedtime stories. Frankly, I can think of no more futile task than trying to Bowdlerize Bond—surely if you did the job thoroughgoingly, there would be nothing left.
Censorship is rampant on the internet. Accounts canceled, shadow-banned, voices silenced and suppressed in nefarious ways for expression of opinions counter to the dominant ideology. Intense pressure applied by the security apparatus and government agencies on the internet companies to suppress and bury dissent similar but so far more subtle to the McCarthy hearings in the early 50s.
Censorship is rampant on the internet. Accounts canceled, shadow-banned, voices silenced and suppressed in nefarious ways for expression of opinions counter to the dominant ideology. Intense pressure applied by the security apparatus and government agencies on the internet companies to suppress and bury dissent similar but so far more subtle to the McCarthy hearings in the early 50s.