Matt Taibbi's address before a Congressional Subcommittee on the Twitter Files
Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Thu, 03/09/2023 - 7:02pmChairman Jordan, ranking member Plaskett, members of the Select Committee,
Chairman Jordan, ranking member Plaskett, members of the Select Committee,
Okay, I had my fun with my last essay about censorship. But this one is serious. I am contemplating this question. When, if ever, is censorship appropriate?
For the following examples, I'm using a 3-tiered answer:
I am writing here to confess my sins. Yesterday, I partially agreed with the author of an essay about censorship. My heresy was righteously called out by other c99 members and I have seen the light. You have my abject apology for daring to suggest that banning Our President from Twitter was a good thing.
and maybe we will not notice how you are telling us what to think and why.
1:29 - 2:13
"I have a question for the audience. When I said Comey was fired by Trump, y'all cheered, Why?"
[video:https://youtu.be/iYZbtTGVmhE?t=87]
Censoring the audience's original opinion.
audience in background 1-9 sec, dead silence in the background 10-30 sec, audience in background 31 sec to end
This morning I discovered something amazing at The Willamette Weekly, a lefty alt free publication here in Portland. I was censored by WW for commenting on a white nationalist march for "free speech". There is irony all over the place in this one.
Recently, there's been a torrent of videos on Youtube of people talking about, and heavily criticizing, Google's decision to demonitize (take away advertisement based funding) any and all videos that are, to name a few categories, "controversial, include swearing, show violence, contain partial nudity," among others. The immediate reaction was that people believed Google was engaging in censorship of some form.