Sometimes...

Why would profane or offensive comments not be protected from censorship? What is the excuse there exactly?

And neither of us know that this was why we no longer see the comments. For all you know they may have been genuinely interesting opinions on the topic that were deleted just because somebody felt like the rest of us shouldn't read them. How would you tell the difference? I couldn't. To me the two things are the same. There is therefore in my humble opinion only one kind of censorship and we either are fine with or in opposition to all of it. There is no middle ground in this.

From how I understand it comments on other topics/stories are deleted as not being relevant. Not necessarily censorship therefore, but keeping things on topic.

Gisteron wrote: Why would profane or offensive comments not be protected from censorship? What is the excuse there exactly? ...There is no middle ground in this.

In my humble opinion, there is middle ground in everything whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. The profane or offensive comment is not protected because there are Terms of Use for that site explicitly prohibiting those things. BBC is reserving the right to decide what is offensive or profane. They own the site, and they have the legal right to do it. I don't like it, but those are the rules we've agreed to go by when we participate on that site.

There will always be acceptable reasons for censorship as well, even if you choose not to agree with them. I cannot yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater without fear of legal consequences because it is deemed irresponsible or dangerous by the society that I am a part of. This same society agrees that I shouldn't be stopped from being a jackass in a white pointy hood claiming I'm superior because I have pasty skin. There will always be a middle ground.

For the record, I still don't like that they are censoring anything. The conversation should happen, and it should go unimpeded. I agree that there is no way to see those censored comments or know why they were blocked, and that is why I don't like the generic message in place of a genuine response from a human being. I'm simply commenting on the legality of what they are doing and why they may feel justified in doing it.

Prohibiting something does not license nor excuse you for censoring it! It is their site. Legally they have the rights to everything posted there and they can deal with it in almost any way they please with and without reference to any rules.
You actually can yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre and that is all the difference. Censoring your words is not punishment against you for violating the rules, it is just making sure nobody can tell if you did anything wrong whilst claiming that you did. A consequence on the internet would be blocking you from the article or banning you from the site. What they do is spitting on your content and calling you a witch in the process, just so nobody is upset about it.


And on a side note: Senan, since you say there is a middle ground between being X and being something other than X whilst accepting that there is no way of telling a just removal from an unjust silencing, I must issue the following challenge to you: Please, develop an internally consistent 2^n-1-dimensional vector space of boolean functions that can operate with the Law Of Non-Contradiction and yet without the Law Of Excluded Middle; let n be a positive integer. Once you're done (i.e. no sooner, since that vector space now becomes a prerequisite) I am willing to hear any and all acceptable reasons for censorship and discuss them with and under the logical framework you created.

Gisteron wrote: Please, develop an internally consistent 2^n-1-dimensional vector space of boolean functions that can operate with the Law Of Non-Contradiction and yet without the Law Of Excluded Middle; let n be a positive integer. Once you're done (i.e. no sooner, since that vector space now becomes a prerequisite) I am willing to hear any and all acceptable reasons for censorship and discuss them with and under the logical framework you created.

No, thanks. I'd rather just admit that I'm wrong and continue to be blissfully ignorant in the fictional middle ground where censorship is something we all have to deal with. Nobody with the power to censor you would be interested in completing your challenge either. In fact, few with this power are probably even capable, but that doesn't really matter, does it? I'm still not going to yell "FIRE" in a theater just to prove that I can get away with it.

Gisteron wrote: Censoring your words is not punishment against you for violating the rules, it is just making sure nobody can tell if you did anything wrong whilst claiming that you did.

I'm not so sure, as if we're talking about profanity then it might be violating the rules not by the message but by the manner of expressing the message. In my experience this type of management can appear like censorship, but since its only for breaching the terms of service its not perhaps what you might mean by censorship - if censorship was happening for other reasons then the admin [strike]would[/strike] [strike]could[/strike] should be breaching their terms of employment
:whistle:

Looking at my local taxpayer funded national news agency, and it has some house rules for comments, some of which leave a lot of wiggle room for mods to control, such as;

"Preference is given to comments that represent viewpoints that have not yet been widely canvassed by other contributors."
"...reserves the right to reject contributions from participants who seek to dominate the discussion."
"...or which appear to deliberately provoke arguments, will be deleted."

They 'seem' innocuous but the last one is open to manipulation, such that if groups of people respond argumentatively then those groups can in effect shut down minority views by making them appear to provoke arguments.

Perhaps news agency comments need to be limited to one post per person per story, no replies to comments, and require pay to access to limit those tubesock account things
:pinch:
Which would be bad since I don't pay for news websites :blink:

Senan wrote: There will always be acceptable reasons for censorship as well, even if you choose not to agree with them. I cannot yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater without fear of legal consequences because it is deemed irresponsible or dangerous by the society that I am a part of.

That is not censorship.

steamboat28 wrote:

Senan wrote: There will always be acceptable reasons for censorship as well, even if you choose not to agree with them. I cannot yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater without fear of legal consequences because it is deemed irresponsible or dangerous by the society that I am a part of.

That is not censorship.

I agree, unless i have expressed this opinion that I should be allowed to yell it as a comment on a website and I have argued that my opinion should be protected speech because I am being unfairly censored. My argument would be wrong, but now I have taken the debate to a level that results in endless circular arguments about personal freedom vs. public safety (and apparently challenge assignments involving Boolean functions). I was just using the example to demonstrate that sometimes rules fly directly in the face of freedom, but we choose to ignore that for some reason, compelling or not. It's similar to the vaccination argument in that people believe they are entitled to their opinion and that gives them the right to endanger the public by not vaccinating their children. No matter how 'wrong' it is, we are hesitant to put our right to make stupid decisions (or stupid comments) at risk.

I think censorship of any kind goes against every kind of progress, but to argue that people should be allowed to say whatever they want on a corporate owned and operated website and then be allowed to question that corporation's motives when they censor it is ridiculous. Just don't use that site anymore.

steamboat28 wrote:

Senan wrote: There will always be acceptable reasons for censorship as well, even if you choose not to agree with them. I cannot yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater without fear of legal consequences because it is deemed irresponsible or dangerous by the society that I am a part of.

That is not censorship.

It is. Just because you agree with this type of censorship does not mean it isn't censorship. Most censorship happens to prevent the same kind of issues that would arise if someone shouted "fire" in a crowded theatre.