• pingveno@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Censorship in the West: we don’t want that on our platform, person goes and finds a different platform.

    Censorship under authoritarian governments: Criticize government? Straight to jail. Uncover wrongdoing by party official? Jail. Political opposition becoming more than controlled opposition? Believe it or not, jail.

      • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        Overton window

        There’s a difference between socially unacceptable and “straight to jail”.

        You mean like Assange and Manning?

        Manning not only released documents that were under her care as an intelligence officer, but also broke into other systems. Regardless of whether you support what she did, she did so knowing the consequences of breaking her oath. In doing so, she made public wrongdoing, but also exposed sources that the US had promised would be kept safe.

        Assange… well, that feels more like a case of karma. The Obama/Biden administration declined to indict him in relation to the Manning leaks. He then screwed with the 2016 US elections, blatantly stoking conspiracy theories, laundering Russia’s hacks in service of Trump, and coordinating with the Trump campaign to time releases to blunt at least one scandal. In return, the Trump administration indicted him. I don’t fully understand the case, so I won’t comment on it.

        Compare that to investigative journalism in general in the US. Journalists can publish pieces that are extremely critical of both the government and corporations. High up people regularly are dragged down from their perch by an enterprising reporter. Maybe newsrooms aren’t as well staffed as they used to be, but it’s not in the same league as countries like China, Russia, and Venezuela that lack anything resembling a free press.

    • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      I’m assuming you’re talking about China in this.

      Yeah no. For anyone just randomly complaining about the government, in order of frequency of “enforcement” used, frequency decreases exponentially: 1. No one cares and their post stays up forever; 2. The individual post gets removed or prevented from being posted; 3. Their account on that platform gets banned. The platforms in China like WeChat, the Chinese version of TikTok, etc are still private platforms by private companies btw.

      Oh look! Some actual legislation on the subject! https://lemmy.ml/post/69688/comment/60571

      It’s only when you go beyond just criticizing the government and into advocating for violence, civil disorder, and coup when you actually get into law enforcement response and potential jail time. Which, by the way, is absolutely also true for Western countries, go ahead and point to a single Western “free speech” country that doesn’t outlaw those in their legislation, I’ll wait. By the way, despite popular Western belief, there are no “illegal speech” crimes that are punishable by death in China. They have these nifty things called “maximum punishments allowed by statute” just like the West, and death is only on the table for the most serious crimes like murder, rape, etc, just like the West.