“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” —Voltaire (reportedly)

More accurate if you agree with those in power. IE the censoring of say... jokes about the brian thompson killing, well liked by the majority. Not so well liked by the 1%.

That is an interesting thought experiment, but I would have say no. We all could be wrong, it has happened to me in past. Mass hysteria happens,

Censorship is suspect, not inherently bad.

Freedom of viewpoint expression is a key part of democracy and modern society. But it's not an absolute right of unfettered communication, since that would lead to no recourse when a racist troll projects a deep fake of you raping small children on the side of your house.

Being able to sue someone for libel is censorship. Property rights allowing you to control what happens on your house are censorship. And, yes, the government arresting that hypothetical racist troll for the production of child pornography is also censorship.

Of course, we could just define censorship as "suppression of protected speech" or something similar, but that just hides the game and helps folk who actually want to censor political ideas they don't like get away with it.

First they came for {minority a} and I said nothing because {me! ≠ minority a}.

I'm sure that's where that poem stops, so you're good!

No. There is a thing called a nuanced opinion where just because you agree with some parts of a group doesn't mean you agree with them all.

I don't think I agree if I read this correctly. I'll specific as to how I understand it.

If I have opinion a, and that's the majority opinion, and any other opinion gets censored, I think I'm fine with that. Hard disagree. I wanna expose myself to nuance and other opinions. Of course there's a time and place when people hate you for nuance and specific opinions but censorship implies a legal framework and enforcement. Sure, there's a lot of majority opinions I hold but I don't want other opinions to get censored or punished on most topics. I wanna hear and learn new things.

Example of something I want censorship on: if someone just repeats NS dog whistles in a clear attempt to instigate, I think it might be good to censored them / punish them in some way. Not in a murderer way, but in a "do you know what you're saying and can you grasp what it means?" way.

Example of something I don't want censorship on: opinions political or societal systems. In fact I love discussing different ones, what they bring to the table, how they worked in practice and how they are bad so we can tweak them. On fact I invite people to tell me how capitalism itself is awesome, so we can discuss what we feel needs to be part of a healthy society and maybe we come up with novel ideas.

I guess if you wanna say "there's some censorship that's good" I might actually agree but that's way more of a narrow statement than what you're saying here.

If you tend to be a person who agrees with majority opinions without creating your own then you will likely self-censor yourself.

Censorship starts first in the mind way before it even gets to the point of being expressed where others can see it.

https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/self-censorship/43569

People tend to focus on private and public censorship particularly when it comes to the first amendment. That doesn't even matter if you create an environment where dissent or differing opinion isn't allowed in the first place.

An oppressive government doesn't need to censor everyone. They censor themselves. They don't need to deploy agents to harass people. Your fellow citizens will harass you for them.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I assumed this was a tongue-in-cheeck way of saying it shouldn't be okay, but it is.

ITT: people who think "censorship" only pertains to "state-sponsored censorship"

Moderation tools are a form of censorship on lemmy.

The obvious flaw is that humans are dynamic and evolving and you may not always be in the majority. Therefore you should be fair to everyone.

John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" comes to mind.

The idea of the thought experiment is the creation of a society with the designer behind a veil of ignorance, that is, after the society is created they do not know the circumstances that they will have when joining the society.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you implying that the majority are in favor of censorship?

I block users who say cuntish stuff. That's not censorship, they can still say it. I just have my fingers in my ears.

Mods on an internet forum don't really have the power to censor, they can stop you spreading your shit via their webshite, but they cant stop you from spreading it elsewise.

It's not censorship for me to wipe your graffiti off my wall. It'd be censorship for the police to lock you up for the content of your message. Or for the govt to make writing what you wrote a crime.

If they just do you for criminal damage though that's fine.

If you mean state censorship then not really, as the opinions of those in power are usually not the majority. One example would be climate change: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/spiral-of-silence-climate-action-very-popular-why-dont-people-realise

Another example from Czechia where I live - polls show the majority of people support marriage for all (gay marriage) and euthanasia, but the political landscape renders both quite impossible to be allowed in the foreseeable future.