I highly recommend this video if you'd like to get up to speed on many of the new and sophisticated ways your government is trying to regulate how you communicate with your fellow citizens. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have been intensely covering the "censorship industrial complex" for years. This is merely the latest chapter of a disturbing series of stories they have broken.
Greg Lukianoff explains that censorship, no matter how well intended it is, drives conversation into the shadows, where it festers. It isolates viewpoints away from the mainstream, detached from any interaction with opposing views, where participants experience a false consensus. Where their reach on important topics exceeds their grasp. Those who advocate for censorship to cure "bad" ideas, always makes the situation worse by emboldening the "bad" ideas. This is one of the ideas why censorship never works.
[C]ensorship on one platform may lead to an increase in the amount of similar content on other platforms. This is the unintended consequence of heavy-handed moderation policies.
Social media censorship creates new ecosystems that are ripe for group polarization. As Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein explains in an essay on group polarization: “People who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion [with each other], to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm.”
For a vivid portrayal of how exclusion makes polarization, paranoia, and radicalism far worse, we highly recommend Andrew Callaghan’s documentary This Place Rules, which highlights some of the protests and personalities that played large or small roles in the run-up to, and day of, the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Callaghan has a grave warning about how badly attempts to censor can backfire: “When you take someone who talks about a deep state conspiracy to silence him and his followers and then you silence him and his followers it only really adds to his credibility,” he says in the film. When you’re dealing with people who believe there’s a conspiracy to shut them up, do absolutely nothing that looks anything like a conspiracy to shut them up.
Simply put, censorship doesn’t change people’s opinions. It encourages them to speak with people they already agree with, which makes political polarization even worse.
Scott Barry Kaufman republishes Theodore Roosevelt's challenge to those whose sense of achievement is based only on sitting on the sidelines and taking potshots.
Adolescents in the U.S. are severely distressed, increasingly suicidal. Zach Rausch and Jonathan Haidt weigh in on causation: "The sudden switch from play-based childhood to phone-based childhood is—we believe—the leading candidate for being the major cause of the international collapse of adolescent mental health.8 The evidence of causation is particularly strong for girls. In fact, nobody has yet put forth an alternative theory—one that can explain why the same thing happened at the same time in so many countries. Jean Twenge recently considered thirteen such theories that have been proposed to explain trends in the U.S., and she showed that they don’t even work in the U.S., let alone internationally."
Erika López Prater, an art history professor at Hamline University, lost her teaching position after showing images of the Prophet Muhammad in class. While some faculty members and students called for Hamline to fire López Prater, professor of religion Mark Berkson defended the besieged professor in an essay published in The Oracle, Hamline’s student newspaper. For Berkson’s brave defense of academic freedom, FIRE presented him with the first-ever "Berkson Courageous Colleague Award" at this year's FIRE Faculty Network Conference.
I attended FIRE's faculty conference where Mark make his acceptance speech. His words inspired me and I hope they inspire you too.
An excerpt From Mark Berkson's Acceptance Speech:
I really appreciate the non partisan nature of fires work, their commitments to the principles that are there to protect everyone across the political spectrum are central. And there are times that I read a fire statement, and I go to learn more about the person they're defending. And I must admit, I sometimes say like . . . "Yuck!, I don't know, I don't know about that one, you know!' there are some really disturbing views [audience laughing]. And then, of course, I'm immediately reminded that not only must I extend the same protections, I seek to those with different views, but in a way that can often be difficult to see at the moment, we benefit from hearing those views.
And this occurs within every religious tradition I teach when we see how much is revealed when we juxtapose what is considered orthodox with what's considered heretical. And when we see how worldviews are shaped, principles affirmed and understandings clarified by the engagement with, rather than the silencing of, opposing, even offensive or disturbing, points of view.
The principle that FIRE defends in all realms is articulated well within religion by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who wrote, "Religion is at its best when it relies on strength of argument and example, is at its worst when it seeks to impose truth by force." And this is not just some contemporary idea. 16th century Rabbi Judah Lowe said it beautifully. He wrote, "It is not proper, that we despise the words of our adversaries, but rather we must draw them as close as we can. Therefore, it is proper out of love of reason and knowledge that you should not summarily reject anything that opposes your own ideas. Even if such beliefs are opposed to your faith and religion. Do not say to your opponent 'Speak not. Close your mouth.' On the contrary, you should at such time say speak up as much as you want, whatever you wish. Curbing the words of an opponent in religious matters is nothing but the curbing and enfeebling of religion itself. What strength is manifested when the opponent is not permitted to fight?"