A private company choosing not to allow content for whatever reason is not censorship. People who choose to use the word "retard" are not a protected class, Github can ban this word as they see fit.
Well, in the literal sense it is censorship, being the suppression of materials deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds. A bit like a (likely American) TV censor might "bleep" a word they don't want to expose people's delicate sensibilities to.
I mean, that doesn't make it "evil", but a lot of people might say that censorship of any sort is a bit of a grey area. That whole "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" thing.
I never really understood this part of the american culture. I'm not american and to me they are just words, censoring offensive words with beeps on TV is really an american/british thing, it's really strange to me.
You don't think that people would defend to the death one of the basic principles of human rights?
To be clear, I'm not saying that Github censoring "retarded" is a human rights issue, but as long as we've gone off the rails let's see where the train comes to a stop.
> You don't think that people would defend to the death one of the basic principles of human rights?
A progressive making that claim would never take a bullet so that someone could fly the Confederate flag, for example. It's just not going to happen.
They may fight to defend the 1st Amendment, but that's easy because it's a proxy behind which exists all the specific instances of speech they would find horrible along with the speech they hold dear.
People making the claim probably mean the latter, but the wording implies something more specific, presumably for effect.
To be fair, I agree with your original comment. I'm just nit picking on that particular phrase, independent of what you wrote. I think your use of the phrase is appropriate.
Someone actually got arrested and went to jail in France for an offensive parody of one of the equally offensive Charlie Hebdo covers: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/france-beg... (because it was insensitive to French people rather than Egyptians).
That's not entirely fair, either. I'm sure there are plenty of things that would offend them, but they understand that just because something is offensive does not make it wrong.
It's not required to be offended personally by something to protect freedom of speech, I can understand how else I should say it. And if you don't want to understand it - Charlie Hebdo also published caricatures about christian religion, so it was offensive for them too, for their friends. Muslims just were more aggressive.
They did publish the original danish cartoons, which they publicaly said they found not from a very good taste, and that some were pretty bad cartoons, but that they had to publish them for the sake of free speech, even if it made them a target ( which it did). That's how it all started.
So if a restaurant asks you to leave because you're shouting ethnic slurs, that's censorship? Come on. GitHub is not the entirety of your expressive domain. If you were disallowed by law from saying "retard" I would be sympathetic to this case. As is this entire thread reads like a series of entitled children whinging that their mums told them not to be nasty at school. If you dislike what GitHub has done, host your repo at one of the other free sites that provide this service, and stop insulting people in legitimately oppressive states by equating your churlish valley bigotry with legitimately repressed speech.
Hey, if you want to argue with the dictionary be my guest. I'm afraid my name isn't Oxford, though, and I'm not really sure how to reach him. Sorry about that.
In that case - since you're merely quoting the dictionary without voicing an opinion - I invite you to refrain from further diluting the present discussion with your vacuous commentary. I assure you that the entirety of HN readership can avail itself of word definition services.
False. When Trey Parker and Matt Stone wished to show Muhammad in South Park Comedy Central overruled them and placed a big black censored box over Muhammad in the cartoon. If you want to say that a black box with the word censored doesn't qualify as censorship then you're retarded.
You are ever correct that GitHub can ban the word if they want. They're fully within their legal right to do so.
I think where the confusion comes from is that along with many cries of "censorship", there is often a subtext of "this is illegal" or "this is not allowed".
> If you want to say that a black box with the word censored doesn't qualify as censorship then you're regarded.
This is a definition of censorship that removes any useful descriptive meaning from the word. It's not censorship when I refuse to listen to offensive things or refuse to repeat them to others or allow you to graffiti it on the side of my house. Similarly, it's not censorship when a private company declines to let you use its private resources to say whatever you want.
The difference between these types of "censorship" and scary, actual government censorship is that GitHub doesn't have the authority to hold a gun to your head and compel you to be quiet. You can take your repo and host it privately and say whatever you want. Comedy Central didn't have the authority to compel Trey Parker and Matt Stone to be quiet. Parker and Stone could have terminated their contracts and posted a Mohammed cartoon through some other channel.
You rob censorship of its depth of meaning -- compulsory silencing by force -- when you apply it to private actors choosing not to use their private resources to promote others' speech.
I could not possibly disagree with you any more strongly. I'm far from alone in my opinion. I may even be on the majority side. That doesn't make me right of course. But it is worth your consideration.
I could defend my stance. I think you're probably smart and probably know almost everything I'd say. If that's the case then we're resigned to agree to disagree.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information
The argument is it isn't suppression because as a private company, people can still choose to engage in that speech elsewhere. The government can actually make laws to stop people from saying certain things in any context.
When a private company does it, they can only do it in the medium they control and for people who choose to use that medium.
It's simply incorrect to say that private companies cannot engage in censorship.
If they have enough control over a medium to effectively suppress speech, then yes. The argument is whether that is the case here. The definition of censorship is not merely "any case where someone prevents someone from saying something". The bar is higher than that.
And people can discuss whether that is or is not appropriate as they see fit. If enough people feel differently, that's when alternative services start to appear.
This always seems to happen in situations like this. People jump to defend the actions of the company with statements like "It's their website, they can do what they want". Which is true, except nobody is arguing that fact.
The argument is that Github's censorship is acceptable because those are the terms under which they choose to operate their business and if you don't like it you can go somewhere else (which seems reasonable enough to me).
I think toehead2000 was asking how that squares with a bakery not being allowed to operate their business under certain other terms.
Exactly -- it's not censorship when you give someone something for free but ask them to abide by your rules. If you want the freedom to say whatever you want, pay someone to host your repo or host it yourself.
