Every one of us has some image or example pop into our head when we hear the word “censorship.” To some it might be some traditional level of suppression of free speech. To others it might be Middle Eastern women not being allowed to speak even their name out loud. To many, it will evoke the golden age of newspapers and television where certain words or phrases weren’t allowed to be uttered. Or Lucy and Desi weren’t able to sleep in the same bed on I Love Lucy.
Much like censorship itself, it is many things to many people. And, for most, it is a draconian term right out of George Orwell’s 1984. Orwell famously said, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
This past week, Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, said he would be loosening or removing “fact checking” and “over-censorship” programs on his platforms. Instead, Zuckerberg will rely more on community fact checking and allow anyone to say just about anything on his platforms.
These were the same platforms that were responsible for the advancement of wild allegations about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Those allegations were supported and funded by outside organizations and nation states. Other times, his platforms are used to just pick fights amongst people sewing division where there was none before. We saw how social media was used during the pandemic and around vaccinations and how it has basically divided the country 50/50 into Red Hats and Blue Hats.
Instead of finding more innovative ways to bring people together, Zuckerberg says let his platforms be the place to duke it out in a last-man standing royal rumble.
Censorship has gotten complicated because any effort to mold a message is considered censorship now. Look at the coverage of the California wild fires. One network talks about the politics of budgeting firefighting while the other talks about who else is to blame for these fires. (Hint: It’s a lot of blame.) While not censorship, it’s crafting a message while not mentioning key angles and facts so, in a sense, it is censorship. Which is exactly what will feed the engine of Zuckerberg’s platforms.
It seems topics have gotten so complicated (or so simple) that there is no “right” answer anymore. Only levels of blame and drama.
We saw this most recently in our area in Marion County, Kan., where a newspaper was raided in an effort to censor the messaging about potential crimes committed by the chief of police in that area. This was a more blatant example, certainly. But most are much more subtle.
Book bans by school districts. Art exhibits and what type of funds support those artists. Uniform coded and dress codes for students and athletes. All are examples of censorship to a degree. But even trying to control those efforts is seen, by some, as censorship itself. Any choice on what is messaged has some level of self-regulation or self-censorship. I’m not going to walk into a room and scream a curse word at the top of my lungs. (But I could.) Ultimately, Zuckerberg’s decision this week to allow everything on his platforms might provide more transparency. But, I suspect, it will simply be a place to spout any random truth or lie that anyone wants to. And on social media that nearly always means the worst possible outcomes.
I wonder what George Orwell would think about this week’s decisions. Well, thankfully, we already know. He said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
And we are left to party over on Instagram like it’s 1984.
(Get more from Kamler on the X machine, formerly known as Twitter, by following @chriskamler)
